As the Congress gets busy in selecting candidates for the Bihar Assembly polls, the old strings of family politics are fervently at work in the party’s state unit, causing resentment and threatening to spoil the party’s lofty ambitions for the crucial state.
After claiming to allot party tickets only to the “deserving candidates,” the Congress is currently nearing the final stages of choosing scores of such people as candidates whose suitability seems to have been decided primarily by the close links between their family relations and the party. Besides, the Bihar State Election Committee (PEC) of the Congress has reportedly recommended only single names for many constituencies to the Central leadership despite instructions to provide a list of most suitable names as probable candidates.
A classic example of family politics dictating the selection of candidates is in Bettiah, from where the Congress has reportedly decided to field former chief minister Kedar Pandey’s daughter-in-law Nutan Pandey, who is still a Central government employee posted outside Bihar. It seems to have hardly mattered to the PEC that all the three members of this family — Nutan Pandey’s late husband, her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law — who contested elections on a Congress ticket in and around Bettiah in recent years had lost miserably.
Sources said former chief minister Jagannath Mishra’s daughter-in-law, who is the wife of ruling JD(U) leader and former minister Nitish Mishra, is most likely to get a Congress ticket for the Jhanjharpur seat. Similarly, the sons of three other Congress leaders — legislative party leader in the Bihar Legislative Council, Mahachandra Prasad Singh, Assembly legislative party leader Ashok Ram and former Union minister K.K. Tiwary — have been reportedly assured of party tickets for Maharajganj, Buxar and Samastipur respectively.
While Mr Mahachandra Prasad Singh is the head of the 18-member PEC, Mr Tiwary is a member. Kripanath Pathak, another PEC member, has been reportedly chosen to contest from Madhubani despite the fact that he had lost all the four past elections he contested. Sources also said the PEC has finalised Vishwamohan Sharma’s name for the Lauria seat despite his having lost all the four elections he contested in the area in the past. In an ambitious gambit aimed at rising to power in Bihar or gainfully near it, the Congress stuck to its bold decision of contesting all the 243 Assembly seats in the state on its own. But the apparent overlooking of leaders with winnable chances and steadfast loyalty to the party in the ticket selection process could backfire and neutralise the Congress party’s Bihar ambitions, say analysts.