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Tuesday, March
23, 2004, Chandigarh, India
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BSP a major force in UP
Former Lok Sabha Speaker P.A. Sangma beats drums to celebrate the launching of his party, Nationalist Trinamool Congress Party, in Guwahati on Sunday. — PTI
photo At 92, Basu still a crowd-puller Criminals keep gunpowder dry
for UP poll Hema not to campaign for ‘ticket-snatcher’ husband BJP faces uphill task in Himachal
Haryana parties look
for heavyweights Naxalites: a factor in Andhra Jaya Prada seeks entry from Rampur Shiv Sena makes inroads
into Vidarbha
Sirsa to have 1,171 polling booths Political couples of Orissa
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BSP a major force in UP WHEN Mr Kanshi Ram floated the Dalit Soshit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti (DS4) in 1981, no political turbulence was reported from anywhere in Uttar Pradesh. The birth of the Bahujan Samaj Party in 1984 was as uneventful as the samiti’s existence for three years. Reports of his ill-health created the illusion that the BSP may not be able to replace the decrepit Republican Party, the original champion of the underclass. In less than 20 years, Ms Mayawati has reinvented the BSP into a potent political force that no mainstream party can afford to ignore. When she released the party’s manifesto in Delhi on Thursday two things stood out. One, she had decided to give the BSP a national face. Two, the booklet did not have the picture of Mr Kanshi Ram on the cover. Instead, it was a face Shahnaz Hussain has worked on to make it match the India Shining look. At party conventions, photographs of Dr Ambedkar and Ms Mayawati stare out of most posters. In most of UP and beyond, she is now perceived as the Dalit who might become Prime Minister. Not Kanshi Ram who coined the DS4 slogan, “vote
humara, raj tumhara, nahi chalega, nahi chalega.” Not Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr Udit Raj or Mr Prakash Ambedkar. Whether she will lead the party to victory in UP is not the issue. The importance of being the BSP lies in it having become a permanent obstacle in the way of parties wanting to reach Delhi without Dalit votes. Her votes belong to her and no one else. That cannot be said about the Congress. Her alleged role in the Taj scam has not deterred her from unfolding an extremely aggressive strategy for UP. She occasionally refers to the Congress and the BJP as ‘Manuwadi’, but has discarded the offensive slogan against ‘tilak, tarazu aur
talwar.’ The BSP is no longer a party of the Dalits. And that is reflected in the list of candidates she released for the Lok Sabha. Mr Mitrasen Yadav who used to represent Faizabad in the Lok Sabha as a CPI member is now on her list of the chosen ones. Then there is Mr Akbar Ahmed Dumpy, who once again has abandoned the Congress and walked back to the BSP along with his wife Naina
Balsawar. Former socialists and Samajawadis, Brahmins and Thakurs have been given tickets to help the BSP break free of its ‘Dalits only’ image. The secret of Bhenji’s amazing and often enviable political success lies in her ability to set her own agenda. Her ambition, arrogance and style of functioning have often taken her to the brink of infamy, but her sharp political instinct has helped her fight back into political reckoning. When the BSP was floated by Mr Kanshi Ram, it managed few seats, but enough votes to make the political arithmetic go haywire. Today, the BSP is an important factor in UP. Going by its rate of political growth in the past 20 years, it may in due course emerge as the elusive third force to replace both the ‘Manuwadi’ parties at the Centre.
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Vajpayee wave in country: Sangma Guwahati, March 22 ‘‘It only shows the desperation of the Congress. There are surveys that the Congress will get 110 to 120 seats in the Lok Sabha poll, but I think they will go below 100,’’ Mr Sangma said this morning before leaving for his constituency. “The Congress is getting desperate day by day because there is a Vajpayee wave sweeping the nation. I will not say it is a BJP wave nor will I call it an NDA wave. But there is a great Vajpayee wave from the down South to the eastern India and the Congress will be swept by that,’’ he claimed. Mr Sangma lamented that the Congress had once again made itself dependent on the Gandhi dynasty by promoting Rahul Gandhi and pushing for his sister Priyanka Gandhi. “I see a great fall of the Congress after the election. In fact, I clearly see a re-alignment of forces in the Congress. The Congress is not in the habit of sitting in the opposition for 11 years and that means a whole generation will be gone without tasting power. This is precisely where senior Congressmen will make a new move,’’ he said. Asserting that he would quit Parliament if Mrs Sonia Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India, he said he was against moving a Bill to make a law forbidding people of foreign origin from occupying high offices. “Many people asked me why I did not bring a private member Bill in Parliament. I could have, but the Congress, for the next century, would have shouted from the rooftop that the law denied their leaders. I want the election to take its own course,’’ he said. — UNI
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At 92, Basu still a crowd-puller Kolkata, March 22 Instead, the party has appointed the younger Budhadeb
Bhattacharjee, the present Chief Minister for the job. They feel the old Jyoti Basu has lost much of his glamour and his presence in the meetings will not make any magic in the electorates’ mind. Basu , however, is keen take an active part in the election campaign. He wants the party to allow him to address public meetings both in the city and the districts as he did in the past. He feels that he is still quite physically fit and can attend at least one public meeting a day. Leaders of some major partners of the front also want Jyoti Basu be fully utilised in the forthcoming election as they believe Basu is still the main crowd-catcher and he is respected as a legendary national leader of the Marxist party. Ashoke Ghosh (Forward Bloc), Debabrata Bandopdhyya (RSP), Monju Kumar Majumdar (CPI) and some other leaders and some candidates have approached Jyoti Basu, personally requesting him to hold election meetings for them in their respective constituencies in the districts and Basu has agreed to that. They consider Jyoti Basu to be an active old horse who is steady and sound. If his health permits, they want him to be thoroughly utilised in the election campaign against the BJP and other ‘communal’ forces. But CPM party secretary Anil Biswas and some other young guards, do not want Jyoti Basu at this age to take any active part in the election. He is quite old and has been suffering from various ailments, says Biswas, adding that at this stage any strain and hardship will tell upon his health. At the of 92, he should not run from place to place, asking the people to vote for the CPM and other allies, Biswas opines. The party secretary feels the Chief Minister, Mr Budhadeb
Bhattacharjee, is a better choice for the party’s main poll campaigner. He says Budhadeb has built a clean image and also proved his leadership qualities which can be better utilised in the electioneering. But Jyoti Basu will still be addressing some large election meetings in and around Kolkata as the Chief Minister wants it. He feels Jyoti Basu has been a vital force in the party and his presence in the public would carry a special meaning. CPM sources say that Basu will be the main speaker at the Left Front’s main election rally at Brigade Ground which will be attended by leaders of all front partners. The date of the rally has not been yet finalised. Forward Bloc leader Ghose says they have invited Basu to address their election meetings at Barasat and
Coochbehar.
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Criminals keep gunpowder dry
for UP poll Lucknow: Ramakant Yadav, in his all 54 years, faces 17 criminal charges including murder, kidnapping and extortion. He was booked under the National Security Act early last week. His younger brother Umakant Yadav is no novice either. He carries 29 criminal charges. Both of them are candidates for the April-May Lok Sabha election. Though the Election Commission of India has declared that the largest elections in human history will also be the cleanest one, many criminals, history-sheeters, and corrupt are lined up for the 2004 poll from Uttar Pradesh. “Cases against me are politically motivated. Nothing has been proved against me in the court,” Ramakant Yadav told The Tribune on telephone from
Azamgarh, 300 km east of Lucknow, the Capital of Uttar Pradesh. Ramakant Yadav carries murder charges, including gunning down of three policemen in a three-hour gunbattle in 1998. His brother was involved in the kidnapping and killing of a Lucknow-based doctor. Another known criminal, Rizwan Zahid, carrying 23 criminal cases, including murder, will contest for the Lok Sabha from Balrampur, 200 km north-east of Lucknow. “I am not a criminal. I am a social and political activist … why will people elect a person with criminal background?” Zahid says. “The cases against me are false and fabricated. Many political leaders have gone to jail, it does not mean that all of them are criminals.” Zahid, will also contest on Bahujan Samaj Party ticket and is pitted against another criminal, Brij Bhushan Saran Singh of BJP. Bhalchand Yadav, another dreaded name is to contest the poll on BSP ticket. Mitrasen Yadav is BSP candidate from Faizabad. Kamalkant
Saxena, a retired police official said over 25 known criminals are expected to contest the elections. “Most of them have history sheet against them and are in the top 10 of the police record,” he said. Babloo
Srivastava, who controls his gang from Naini jail in Allahabad, also wants to contest the Lok Sabha election. Similarly, bandit queen Seema
Parihar, who also is in jail, may join the poll fray from Kanpur, 80 km south-west of Lucknow. They say crime and politics go hand-in-hand: criminals have the money needed for politics and politicians have the power and influence needed to avoid conviction. “Criminals enjoy so much patronage, both from the police and politicians... that they manage to easily coerce witnesses. Those who resist are even eliminated,” says
I.B. Singh, a senior high court lawyer in Lucknow. “Consequently, criminals find it convenient to take refuge in politics, where they manage to get away simply on the plea that they have not been convicted so how could they be criminals?” India’s most famous criminal-turned-MP was “Bandit Queen” Phoolan Devi, jailed for 11 years for the massacre of 20 upper caste men — which she always denied — before being elected to the Lok Sabha twice from
Mirzapur. She was shot dead in 2001. In Uttar Pradesh, intelligence agencies have declared 23 of the 80 seats as potential flashpoints. “That was essentially on account of the possibility of people with criminal antecedents plunging into the electoral fray,” a state government official told The Tribune on condition of anonymity. “Their names spell terror,” said the state official.
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Hema not to campaign for ‘ticket-snatcher’ husband
New Delhi, March 22 Talking to UNI, Ms Gamang said she was forced by the leadership to contest the Gunupur Assembly segment and her campaign would be confined to her constituency only. “I will campaign for the Congress, not for my husband who snatched my ticket,’’ she said. Mr Giridhar Gamang, a veteran Congress leader, had fielded his wife from his old constituency Koraput, when he became the Chief Minister of Orissa in 1999. “If I do not contest the Assembly election, I would meet political death,’’ she said and claimed that she would have won the Lok Sabha seat by more than 100,000 votes. Asked whether she was happy, Ms
Gamang, a first-timer in the Lok Sabha, said, ‘‘I am not happy. It is not progressive. From Parliament, I will go to Assembly, if I win.’’ However, she said as an obedient Congress worker, she had accepted the decision of the party high command and would leave for Orissa in two or three days. She would file her nomination on March 28. Mr Gamang left for Koraput this morning to file his nomination and start the campaign.
— UNI
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BJP faces uphill task in Himachal Shimla, March 22 Taking advantage of all positive factors the BJP-HVC combine made a clean sweep of all four seats in the last Lok Sabha elections. The combine polled almost 59 per cent of the votes and led in as many as 64 of the 68 segments. All candidates won with over one lakh votes. It was a marked improvement over the 1998 Assembly elections during which the two parties together managed to win only 34 seats. It was only the second time in the electoral history of the state that the Congress lost the Shimla seat. The party lost the seat for the first time in 1977 when the Janata wave wiped it out from north India. It was the only occasion when the BJP was in power both at the Centre and in the state. The political scenario in the state has undergone a seachange since then. The BJP has been ousted from power and the two coalition partners have parted ways. The electoral ground that the BJP lost could be judged from the fact that it won only 16 seats in the Assembly and was relegated to the third or fourth position in as many as 14 seats. It was the party’s worst performance ever since it came into being in 1980. The lot of the HVC has been worse. It was all but completely wiped out from the state. The party supremo, Mr Sukh Ram, was the only one to make it to the Vidhan Sabha. A tough battle is on the cards as the Congress is making a determined bid to wrest the four seats. It has already consolidated its position in the Shimla seat by winning over Dr D.R. Shandil, who won as an HVC candidate in 1999. He will contest as a Congress candidate. Prominent leaders of the HVC have deserted the party and crossed over to either the Congress or the BJP. They include Dr R.L. Markandey, Mr Mansa Ram and Mr Prakash Chaudhary, all former ministers. The disintegration of the HVC will help the Congress more than the BJP. The Kangra and Hamirpur constituencies have been the traditional stronghold of the BJP while the Congress has been the dominant force in Shimla and Mandi. The emergence of the HVC, a breakaway faction of the Congress, changed the electoral equations in Mandi, the home district of Mr Sukh Ram. The BJP emerged as a political force to challenge the Congress, which ruled the roost for about three decades after 1977 when the Janata Party made a clean sweep in the Lok Sabha poll. The Congress came back strongly wresting all four seats in 1980. Riding the sympathy weave in the wake of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination, it repeated its performance in 1984. The BJP won three seats and the Congress one in 1989 while the two parties equally shared the seats in the 1991 mid-term poll. The Congress more than recovered the lost ground by winning all four seats in 1996. The BJP repeated the 1989 performance by wresting three seats while the Congress maintained its hold over the Shimla seat. It was only in 1999 that the Congress lost all four seats.
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Voice behind BJP’s ‘India Shining’ New Delhi, March 22 But Manish Khullar, the lead voice behind the India Shining advertisement campaign along with Palash Sen of the Euphoria fame, says that he has no political ambitions or affiliations. He went for the trials and got selected. It was only a week later that he came to know it was a part of an advertising campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party, he said, adding that he was ready to sing for any party. In an interview, he refused to comment on the veracity of the ‘India Shining’ slogan put forward by the BJP. “I am not politically inclined,” he said. Answering a question about the current trend of remixes, he said, “You can improve on the technical part, but not the singing part; it kills the originality of the song. He is, however, open to singing offers from the film industry. Manish was speaking on the occasion of the release of his latest album, Radha Krishan Sankirtan with music by Jaspal Moni. Apart from contributing to various albums like ‘Bura Na Mano Holi Hai’ and ‘Amrit Varsha’, Manish has recorded for popular TV and radio jingles, including those for Kelvinator, Hero Honda, Shri Ram Honda, and LG’s popular commercial ‘All the best’ for the Indian Cricket team in 1999. — UNI
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Haryana parties look
for heavyweights Rohtak, March 22 This has delayed the finalisation of the lists. While the BJP and the Haryana Vikas Party have announced five candidates each, the ruling Indian National Lok Dal has so far announced just two — Mr Ajay Singh Chautala from Bhiwani and Mrs Krishna Malik from Sonepat. The Congress is yet to announce its nominees for all 10 Lok Sabha seats. In the case of the BJP only the names of five sitting MPs have been announced. These are: Mr Rattan lal Kataria (Ambala), Mr Ram Chander Bainda (Faridabad), Mr I. D. Swami (Karnal), Dr Sudha Yadav (Mahendragarh) and Mr Kishan Singh Sangwan (Sonepat). The party is yet to decide its candidates from Bhiwani, Hisar, Kurukshetra, Rohtak and Sirsa. Last time the party had an alliance with the INLD which, however, broke up after the parliamentary poll was announced last month. The BJP by itself has support only amongst the urban voters. It will find it hard to garner rural votes now that it is contesting on its own. This has made the task of selecting the candidates for the five seats held in the 13th Lok Sabha by the INLD candidates. There are hardly any political heavyweights within the party who can hope to carry an election entirely on their own shoulders. The Haryana Vikas Party of former Chief Minister Bansi Lal has finalised its candidates for five seats including the party supremo’s son, Mr Surinder Singh, who will contest against another equally heavyweight sitting MP, Mr Ajay Singh Chautala (INLD). Mr Ajay Singh is a son of Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala. The HVP, too, like the BJP is wrestling with the problem of locating suitable candidates who can face their heavyweight opponents in the poll. The INLD political think-tank is toying with the idea of fielding three senior ministers. They are Finance Minister Sampat Singh from Hisar, Town and Country Planning Minister Dhirpal Singh from Rohtak and Mr Mohammed Ilyas, Animal Husbandry Minister, from Faridabad. But that leaves five more Lok Sabha seat, for which it is finding it hard to find strong candidates, who can weather the anti-incumbency storm. The Congress faces the biggest dilemma among all parties. All its senior leaders are reluctant to enter the fray. Former HPCC chief Birender Singh has been made in charge of the Congress campaign in UP and he is ruled out for the coming poll. The HPCC chief, Mr Bhajan Lal, has already publicly indicated his reluctance to contest. He is, however, interested in his younger son former legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi, from Bhiwani as his Assembly constituency, Adampur, falls in that Lok Sabha segment. The Leader of the Opposition in the Haryana Assembly, Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda, is equally wary of the poll and given the choice he, too, would like to rather stick to state politics. As such both Mr Hooda and Mr Bhajan Lal are working more for getting each other nominated than for themselves or their supporters. The Congress stands as a badly divided house today. Under the circumstances the central leadership of the party is banking upon personal popularity and standing of prospective candidates. All these parties have themselves to blame for the paucity of political heavyweights within themselves. In the INLD the leadership has done everything in the past to keep its second-rung leadership in check by restricting their influence so that they remain dependent on the chief minister for their electoral prospects. In the Congress the infighting and the dependence of the central leadership has done this job. The HVP, too, has not allowed the second-rung leaders to either aspire or become too big. The BJP has been short of strong leaders ever since the death of Dr Mangal Sein several years ago. Since then it has looked for political crutches alternately in the HVP and the INLD. It has just one political heavyweight candidate who meets the criterion required this time – Mr I. D. Swami, a union minister, who will contest from Karnal. The political and electoral scenario therefore remains fluid. The parties will wait till others announce their candidates before coming out with their own lists. Political analysts also do not rule out major changes in the partial lists announced so far.
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Naxalites: a factor in Andhra HYDERABAD: When Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu prepared himself for a visit to the shrine of Lord Balaji in Tirumala on October 1, 2003, he was seeking the blessings of the Lord of Seven Hills for the poll due next year. But PWG Naxalites had other plans for him. The assassination bid on the Chief Minister’s life changed the gears of the state suddenly into the election mode as Mr Naidu decided to call for early elections. The 53-year-old Chief Minister, who was already disturbed by the separatist movement raging in Telangana, was shattered by the attempt on his life by the militant outfit and decided to seek a fresh mandate. While dissolving the Assembly, Mr Naidu declared that his Telugu Desam Party wanted to go to the people on the issue of naxalite violence and separatism. This is perhaps for the first time in the country that a political party in power chose to seek the mandate of the people on the issue of extremist violence. The PWG, the most virulent among the Maoist armed groups operating in the backward regions of Telangana and coastal Andhra, is a tough enemy to fight against, even politically. Founded in 1983, the outfit routinely calls for poll boycott but is always known to side, overtly or covertly, with a political party of its choice. The armed group, which enjoys substantial clout in the Telangana countryside, supported Congress and the TDP alternately in the past elections. The Naxalites have made their preference very clear this time by publicly stating that they would not allow TDP and BJP leaders to campaign in the areas under their influence. Armed dalams of PWG have been regularly attacking ruling TDP MLAs and party functionaries and threatening local leaders not to campaign for the BJP-TDP alliance. “Naidu, with the help of the BJP, has been pursuing anti-people policies to please World Bank bosses. The people of the state are going to reject him in the elections,” Ramakrishna, alias Akkiraju Haragopal, PWG state secretary, said in a statement. The PWG accuses the Naidu regime of killing more than 1400 Naxalites in fake encounters since 1996 while the TDP Government squarely blames the mindless violence of the armed group for the backwardness of Telangana and other underdeveloped regions in the state. Mr Naidu has accused the Congress and the fledgling Telangana Rashtra Samithi
(TRS) of entering into an understanding with the Naxalites for electoral support among the rural masses of
Telangana. “For the sake of power, the Congress and the TRS are rubbing shoulders with the PWG. Such undemocratic moves spell doom to the progress of the state,” Mr Naidu has been telling the people during his party’s campaign meetings. |
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Jaya Prada seeks entry from Rampur New Delhi, March 22 Jaya Prada, whose candidature from the Rampur constituency came as a surprise, would be seeking her maiden entry into the Lok Sabha. The actress from Andhra Pradesh who recently joined the SP after leaving the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which she represented in the Rajya Sabha for six years, would contest the LS poll for the first time. Jaya Prada’s name figured in the list of 59 candidates announced here by SP general secretary Amar Singh. She said though she had not desired to contest, she was obeying directions from the party supremo, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav. ‘‘It is hard to believe that I am contesting the Lok Sabha elections,’’ she said. She said the TDP had offered her a berth in the Rajya Sabha as well as the LS, but she opted for the SP as it is the party for the masses. Mr Amar Singh refused to agree that the Rampur seat would be tough for the new entrant who has no base there. ‘‘In fact, the SP has four of the five assembly seats in the Rampur parliamentary constituency,’’ he pointed out.
— UNI |
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Shiv Sena makes inroads
into Vidarbha
Nagpur, March 22 However, after an initial setback in the 1991 Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party fought vehemently in 1996 and won three of the four seats it contested in the Vidarbha region, a known Congress citadel in poll history. The saffron party made its debut in the 1991 Lok Sabha poll in Vidarbha, when two of its lesser known nominees, Raju Naik (Washim) and Prakash Bharsakade (Amravati), failed in their first attempt to enter Parliament. Mr Naik finished a poor third where Mr Anantrao Deshmukh (Cong) won while Mr Bharsakade was the runner-up to Pratibha Patil (Cong) in their respective constituencies. The Shiv Sena secured a meagre 4.9 per cent of the votes in 1991. But in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, the Shiv Sena bagged three of the four seats it contested. Prakash Jadhav from the Ramtek Lok Sabha seat was the lone exception to lose to Mr Datta Meghe (Cong) while the three candidates, who succeeded in unfurling the ‘saffron flag’ were Mr Anant Gudhe
(Amravati), Mr Pundlikrao Gawali (Washim) and Mr Anand Adsul (Buldhana). The Sena-BJP alliance had won 33 seats (Sena — 15 and BJP — 18) then. The percentage of votes polled by the Shiv Sena rose to 13.2 from 4.9 in 1991. The 1998 Lok Sabha poll saw the Shiv Sena receiving a big jolt as it lost all four seats it contested. In
Ramtek, Sena’s Ashok Gujar lost to Chitralekha Bhonsale (Cong) while in
Amravati, Mr R.S. Gavai handed over defeat to Mr Gudhe. Former Chief Minister Sudhakar Naik emerged victorious against Dr Dyneshwar Shewale in Washim while Mr Mukul Wasnik proved to be better than Mr Adsul in the Buldhana constituency. The party’s share of votes, however, increased to 14.4 per cent.
— PTI
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Sirsa to have 1,171 polling booths
Sirsa, March 22 However, there are fewer female voters than their male counterparts in this constituency. The number of female voters as per the revised list is 5,65,728 against male voters, whose number is 6,54,210. Of the total poling booths, 72 will be reserved for weaker section. The Sirsa Parliamentary constituency consists of nine Assembly segments in Sirsa and Fatehabad districts. These are Sirsa,
Darba, Ellenabad, Sirsa, Rori, Dabwali (Sirsa), Fatehabad, Bhattu, Tohana and
Ratia.
— UNI |
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Political couples of Orissa Bhubaneswar, March 22 She, along with her late husband Debendra Satpathy, also a former MP, had been one of the state’s most prominent political couples. They have been followed by at least six political couples who have hogged the spotlight in the murky political waters since then. Former Chief Minister Giridhar Gamang and his wife Hema, who have been at the centrestage of a pre-poll wrangling over the Koraput (ST) Lok Sabha seat recently, are one of them. Though Hema was originally given the nod by the Congress high command to seek re-election from Koraput, Giridhar, who had been spending most of his time in recent years, delving into the world of music, staked his claim to the seat. The AICC leadership has finally conceded the seat to Giridhar who had won it eight times in a row between 1972 and 1998. Hema is likely to be fielded from one of the Assembly constituencies, party sources said. Among the other prominent political couples are the PCC chief J.B.Patnaik and his wife Jayanti, a former MP. Jayanti Patnaik, who had won the Cuttack and Berhampur Lok Sabha seats in the past, is expected to be fielded either from the Cuttack parliamentary constituency or from an Assembly seat. Patnaik made her political debut in 1981 when she was fielded from the Cuttack parliamentary constituency in a byelection after J. B. Patnaik resigned the seat to become Chief Minister in 1980. Former Orissa Finance Minister Ramkrushna Patnaik and his wife Kumudini Patnaik, who are active in the contemporary political scene, are another prominent couple. While Ramkrushna Patnaik has been active in politics for over three decades, Kumudini, a schoolteacher, entered the arena only recently when she contested a byelection from the Aska Lok Sabha seat after BJD chief Naveen Patnaik resigned to become Chief Minister. The couple joined the Congress recently. Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo, a scion of the erstwhile royal family of Balangir and his wife Sangeeta are the only prominent political couple in the state BJP. Singh Deo is the Industries Minister in the BJD-BJP coalition government while Sangeeta is the party MP from Balangir in the dissolved LS. Sangeeta has been chosen again by the BJP to contest from the same seat while Kanak Vardhan will be seeking re-election to the Assembly from the Patnagarh seat in Balangir district. Another prominent couple, who were in the Congress for a long time, have recently quit the party, peeved over the entry of former BJD minister Kamala Das into the party. Kartikeswar Patra, a former MP from Balasore and his wife Umarani, a former legislator and former president of Pradesh Mahila Congress, have protested against the induction of Das into the Congress as she belongs to the same Assembly constituency — Bhograi — as them. Former BJD member in Lok Sabha, Padmanav Behera and his wife Bishupriya, a minister of state in the Naveen Patnaik ministry, belong to Kandhamal district. However, Behera has opted out of the Lok Sabha fray this time and will contest from the Phulbani Assembly seat. “It means his wife will step aside for her husband,” a BJD leader said.
— PTI |
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