BJP hunts for Opposition pride, fields Jagdeep Dhankar for VP poll
Photo credit Twitter PMO
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, July 16: The BJP’s choices for candidates in the President’s and Vice President’s elections make for contrasting study – smiling broadly to win over fence-sitters and fiercely frowning when no extra votes are required.
The BJP-led NDA was short of 20,000 votes in the Electoral College for the President’s elections, and the saffron outfit picked Droupadi Murmu to eventually get endorsement from foes such as Shiv Sena and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha.
The BJP is too comfortable in the Electoral College of the election for the Vice President, and the party chose Jagdeep Dhankar, who as Governor has only picked up confrontation with an elected government in West Bengal.
It may be a rare coincidence that both the presiding officers of the two Houses of Parliament will be from the same state – Rajasthan. Dhankar’s victory in the polls is assured, and he hails from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan.
The Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla represents Kota, Rajasthan in the lower House of the Parliament.
The conventional wisdom that a party enjoying a massive majority in the Lok Sabha and cruising to the half-way mark in the Rajya Sabha would make regional balance can now rest.
The BJP’s ‘Mission South’ doesn’t need a person from the southern parts of the country to occupy one of the top Constitutional posts in the country. Nirmala Sitharaman would remain the sole politician from the southern parts of the country to be in the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS).
Dhankar as the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha would be likely to bulldoze his ways in forcing the proceedings of the Upper House of the Parliament, and would make the Trinamool Congress and the Congress seething in the Opposition benches.
Unlike the Lok Sabha, the bills aren’t passed in the din in the Rajya Sabha, and this convention may also be relegated to the pages of history.
The BJP, indeed, is keen to wrest power in Rajasthan, and the party may hope to drum up that two men from the state run the Parliament.
Dhankar has hardly demonstrated any quality while being the Governor of West Bengal that any efforts be spent in searching for his suitability for the post of the Vice President.
With the BJP placing him in the Chair of the Rajya Sabha, the TMC MPs will have no option but to swallow their prides and submit to the directions of Dhankar. The BJP will draw much satisfaction from the plight of the TMC MPs in the Rajya Sabha, for the saffron outfit is facing too much of heat in West Bengal, as its MPs and MLAS desert the ranks to go back to Mamata Baneree, the state chief minister.
For those who over-read the mention of ‘Abbas’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his blog to commemorate the 100th year of his mother Heeraben, the BJP’s choices for the top two Constitutional posts would come as disappointment.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi can also take rest on the lines of Prakash Javdekar and Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The BJP has no confusion at all that the Muslims don’t vote for the party, and the saffron outfit hardly bothers about such a situation.
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