Amitabh
Shukla | Chandigarh
In
a major setback to the Opposition in Haryana, BJP-backed media baron Subhash
Chandra defeated the INLD and Congress-supported lawyer RK Anand in the Rajya
Sabha elections, indicating that despite having the numbers, the Opposition
strategy was flawed from the beginning and they failed to find a common cause.
Chandra,
an Independent candidate supported by the BJP, upset all calculations with his
strategic planning with the help of the BJP, and scraped through amid intense
political drama throughout the day during the polling and late vote count at
the Haryana Assembly here.
As
the MLAs of the Congress and INLD were bound by the respective whips of their
parties, they followed a simple strategy to express their support for Chandra.
They ensured that their votes were rejected so that it helped the BJP-supported
candidate romp home without trouble.
Sources
said that 14 votes of Legislators, including that of Congress spokesman SS
Surjewala, were rejected following Saturday’s polling amid high drama in the Assembly
premises. The results of the elections
were delayed as there were over a dozen objections by the rival MLAs.
One INLD MLA himself admitted that he voted
for Chandra to “return” a favour. “It is
strange that the votes cast by MLAs have been rejected. All of them know the
voting procedure. This has to be deliberate,” a former Congress Minister told
The Pioneer. While Chandra got 24 votes, Anand was left with only 15.
While
Union Minister Birender Singh was also elected to the Rajya Sabha without a
hitch, the real battle lay in the contest between Chandra and Anand.
All
90 Legislators in the Haryana Assembly cast their vote during polling here. The
numbers game in the Assembly clearly favoured the combined Opposition candidate
Anand. While, the INLD has 19 MLAs in the 90-member House, Congress has 17
which puts the figure to 36, enough for the victory figure of 31. But Chandra upset all calculations with his
strategic planning with the help of the BJP.
Chandra
was helped by the fact that there was a vertical division in the Congerss on
the issue of support being extended to Anand. Sources in the Congress said that
the influential faction of the party,
patronised by former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, was opposed
to any support to the INLD candidate. Sources indicated that Congress MLAs
whose votes were declared invalid belonged to the Hooda camp.
BJP
has 47 MLAs in the Assembly, BSP one, SAD one and five are Independents. A candidate needs the support of 31
Legislators to get elected to the Rajya Sabha.
There are four Independents who supported Chandra which took the tally
of the BJP to 51 which means they were 11 short to get their second nominee
elected. But all arithmetical calculations fell flat when the index of
Opposition unity fell short due to the planning of BJP and the internal strife
within Congress as well as the INLD. (June 12, 2016)
No comments:
Post a Comment