NDA candidate Harivansh may win Rajya Sabha deputy chairman race

There is hardly any doubt that journalist-turned-politician Harivansh, who is the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate for the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman’s post, will be elected, even against a candidate backed by the united Opposition — Tiruchi Siva from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). 

Harivansh filed his nomination on Wednesday, backed by his party, the Janata Dal United (JDU). 

The election will take place on September 14.

Apart from the edge the NDA has in the 245-member Upper House (101 after the elections in June when NDA’s strength went up from 90), the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), with its nine MPs, which is bitterly opposed to the DMK, will vote for the NDA. 

If the candidate had been someone other than from the DMK, the AIADMK may have been open to persuasion. And, in a House where the majority mark is 123, the BJP’s 86 seats alone will form a formidable chunk against the Congress’s 65.

The unknown elements are the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) with seven MPs, the YSR Congress with six and the Biju Janata Dal with nine. 

Vice President & Chairman of Rajya Sabha M Venkaiah Naidu conducts a mock session of the Rajya Sabha in Parliament House, in New Delhi, on Wednesday (Photo: PTI)

While TRS and YSR Congress are aware that the BJP has mounted an unequivocal attack against them, the BJD considers the BJP as its friend. Recent BJP appointments in both the southern states suggest that the party is ready to go head to head with its former allies

The bonhomie between the BJD and the BJP became clear after Ashwini Vaishnaw was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Odisha in June. Vaishnaw was earlier chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s PS and was endorsed by him when he decided to contest on a BJP ticket.

Interestingly, in Patna, ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, the Lok Janashakti Party (LJP) is rallying against the JDU, threatening to walk out of the NDA against Nitish Kumar’s ‘misgovernance’ in the state. LJP’s lone Rajya Sabha MP, party patriarch Ramvilas Paswan, was one of the two people who proposed Harivansh’s name and signed his nomination papers.

Harivansh has been editor of popular newspaper Prabhat Khabar for 25 years. Under his leadership, the newspaper did some sensitive reporting from rural Bihar and Jharkhand, especially on problems that locals never thought about but were deeply entrenched. These include arsenic in water, livelihood issues of forest dwellers and role of the timber and sand mafia.

Tiruchi Siva, too, is no intellectual lightweight and is on his fourth term as Rajya Sabha MP from DMK.