Digvijay Singh

Patna, May 28: Denied a ticket by the JD(U), Digivjay Singh generated a counter wave against Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Banka Lok Sabha constituency, by winning the seat at a time when his former party had left a stamp on 32 of Bihar’s 40 seats.

Political circles in general, and Banka voters in particular, conjectured that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, would induct the former firebrand leader of JNU students’ union in his ministry.

Singh, an Independent MP was also the state external affairs minister in the A.B. Vajpayee council of ministers.

However, to everyone’s surprise, the relatively big state, used to sending a number of its representatives to the Union ministry, has only one representation — Meira Kumar, the daughter of former Congress legend Jagjivan Ram.

For the first time in the past two decades, the Union ministry, which was expanded today, has only one Bihar representative.

The previous Manmohan Singh government had as many as 11 ministers from Bihar with Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan, Meira Kumar, Raghubansh Prasad Singh and Premchand Gupta.

The A.B. Vajapyee-led NDA government (1998-2004), too, had nine ministers from Bihar that included Nitish Kumar (railway minister), C.P. Thakur, Shatrughan Sinha and Shahnawaz Hussein as Vajpayee’s cabinet colleagues.

The Narsimha Rao government (1991-95) had two ministers from Bihar; Krishna Shahi and Rameshwar Thakur despite the fact that the Congress had won the solitary Begusarai Lok Sabha seat in 1991.

Digvijay Singh told The Telegraph over phone from New Delhi: “I have extended my support to the Manmohan Singh government. Joining the ministry was not my priority. My priority was to ensure that the government does well.”

However, even a section of Congress leaders are now finding it hard to explain the cold shoulders they received from the Centre despite a six per cent rise in vote share in Bihar.

“It is strange that the Center did not take in the lone Muslim Congress MP (Asrarul Haque) despite the fact that the minority community deserted the RJD to vote for the Congress for the first time in the past 15 years,” said Congress leader Umakant Singh.

State party leaders are also speculating that the Congress strategically decided to not include Digvijay Singh to keep the Bihar chief minister in good humour, as Nitish Kumar has 20 MPs who can work as a cushion for the ruling establishment at the time of crisis. Nitish would not have liked Digvijay — a rebel who won against the chief minister’s wishes — in the Union ministry.

Fatuha poll

Polling for by-election in Fatuha Assembly seat began at 7am amid tight security. Sources said polling began on a peaceful note at all 221 polling booths where 2,21,323 voters were supposed to exercise their franchise. An estimated 40 per cent turnout was recorded in the bypoll that passed off peacefully.

“The bypoll was peaceful with no untoward incidents,” confirmed Bihar joint chief electoral officer Kumar Anshumali, talking to reporters from the state capital.