Seat-sharing for the Bihar Assembly election not only saw Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ceding the political ground to the BJP but also created a hurdle for top cop-turned-politician Gupteshwar Pandey’s electoral plunge. The Bihar Assembly election begins from October 28, when 71 seats will go to the polls including those in the Buxar district from where Gupteshwar Pandey, as speculation went, hoped to contest.
Buxar is Gupteshwar Pandey’s hometown and it has gone to the BJP in the seat-sharing deal that it struck with the JDU of Nitish Kumar. Gupteshwar Pandey took voluntary retirement from service five months ahead of his scheduled retirement in February next year. Pandey, who retired as Bihar’s DGP, did not waste time in joining the JDU in the presence of Nitish Kumar, the party president and the Bihar chief minister.
Gupteshwar Pandey played a role in making actor Sushant Singh Rajput’s death into a political controversy particularly with his comments. In one of the remarks on the controversial issue, Pandey mocked Rajput’s girlfriend and actor Rhea Chakraborty saying she did not have the “auqaat” (stature) to question CM Nitish Kumar.
This is the second time that Pandey has taken a political plunge. In 2009, he had taken voluntary retirement hoping to get a ticket from the BJP to contest Lok Sabha election from Buxar. But the BJP did not oblige him. Nitish Kumar, however, had not taken any action on his retirement application then and rejected the request.
Now that the constituencies — Buxar and Shahpur — from where he expected to get a ticket to contest are in BJP’s share, his hopes have been dashed for all practical purposes. The problem with the BJP is that it cannot give ticket to a JDU leader. It would lead to a rebellion in the ranks.
Secondly, Pandey has become a rallying point for Marathi pride politics in Maharashtra. The Shiv Sena has declared that if Pandey contests the Bihar Assembly election, it would put up a candidate against him. The BJP, being a national party with a strong presence in Maharashtra, cannot risk to side with Pandey, a non-party member.
Another related factor is Devendra Fadnavis, the former Maharashtra chief minister who is the BJP’s election in-charge of Bihar. If the BJP accommodates Pandey, it would make Fadnavis’s life difficult in Maharashtra. He is the chief ministerial face of the BJP in Maharashtra, where the Shiv Sena would campaign strongly to paint him as “anti-Marathi”.
Moreover, there is growing volume of expert opinion, including those from a panel of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), that Sushant Singh Rajput died by suicide. By giving a ticket to Pandey, BJP could end signalling that the party is backing someone who made unfounded claims.
The BJP, in its first list of candidates, did not announce nominees for two seats — Buxar and Brahampur. The word doing round is that the BJP has kept these seats for the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) of Mukesh Sahani, the Bollywood set designer-turned-politician. However, the party did announce its candidate from Shahpur seat in Buxar. This was the seat many speculate would go to Pandey’s kitty.
The BJP has more issues in Buxar, which is now a party stronghold. Its MP Ashwini Chaubey is a powerful local leader. He is unlikely to agree to nomination of Pandey – a Nitish Kumar loyalist — in his own backyard.
But the BJP’s reluctance or compulsions may not shut the doors for Pandey in the Bihar Assembly election or his post-poll political aspirations. Nitish Kumar may field him from some other constituency if Pandey agrees to contest. Else, if the NDA wins the polls, Pandey may find a way into Nitish Kumar’s cabinet through the MLC route.