Three freedom-fighters in the twilight of their ages in Bihar on Friday offered to return their bronze citations to the Congress-led UPA government in protest against the party’s allotment of tickets for Bihar’s Assembly polls to candidates they consider utterly unworthy.
The incident in West Champaran, from where Mahatma Gandhi began his fabled freedom and reform movement in 1917, is a first of its kind against the alleged irregularities and corruption in the Congress Party’s distribution of tickets for Bihar’s 243 constituencies, which has set off a wave of protests against the party’s Bihar in-charge Mukul Wasnik and state Congress chief Mehboob Ali Kaiser.
Shivnath Tiwary (92), Chandradeo Jha (86) and Paremeshwar Shukla (85) faxed a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, offering to return their bronze citations and wishing not to receive further pensions. The trio said the Congress leadership grossly erred by denying a party ticket in Chanpatia constituency to senior leader Muktinath Upadhyay who “possesses a clean image and commitment” and allotting it to Tribhuban Prasad Sharma, who they described as a “rank outsider, corrupt and Maharashtra businessman”.
Urging the Congress leadership to reconsider its decision and revoke the ticket from Sharma, the Gandhian trio wrote: “We had not fought for the nation’s freedom to see the day when such corrupt people participate in the reconstruction of the nation.”
In another first for the Congress in Bihar, a large number of the office-bearers of the West Champaran district unit of the party resigned en masse in protest against the allotment of tickets to “very unworthy people” on Wednesday. They sent their resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi.
Tribhuban Sharma, for whom contesting the Assembly polls would be the first step in politics, also faces criminal charges, the three Gandhians’ letter said. Sharma reportedly has a case pending against him at the Majholia police station (case number 114/2008).
Sources in the Congress said Sharma, who belongs to a backward caste with only about 1,200 votes in Chanpatia constituency, would find winning the seat a most difficult task because Chanpatia, with its strong Brahmin concentration, has elected mostly Brahmins in all elections since 1952.