New Delhi: The day Chairman of the Rajya Sabha announced the date for the election of Deputy Chairman post, the election for the membership in the prestigious Public Accounts Committee got huge attention among the political parties.
In the election, united opposition defeated JD(U) candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh, an ally of ruling BJP with a huge unexpected margin.
Ruling NDA is contemplating to put the first timer Harivansh as their candidate for the post of Deputy Chairman. But before that election win of opposition candidate boosted the morale of the opposition parties. In fact, a meeting of the opposition parties was held on Monday, during which they discussed the strategy to get the required numbers to defeat the NDA candidate. The parties are likely to finalise their strategy and decide the name of their candidate tomorrow at 1 pm.
Monday's election for two posts in the PAC got huge attention. Earlier, TDP MP CM Ramesh was the member of that PAC when they were the partner of ruling BJP. After their departure from the Central Government, Presiding Officer of the house decided to shift Ramesh from PAC to another Committee on Public Undertaking. Instead, Harivansh and BJP MP Bhupender Yadav were nominated in the PAC. But opposition parties did not take this lightly. In fact, they had a discussion with the BJP floor leaders that let Ramesh be allowed to continue in the PAC. Leaders took time to decide on the issue.
Earlier, when TMC leader Derek O'Brien asked for a reply from the BJP leaders they did not give any response as their top leadership did not agree on Ramesh's name as a member of the PAC.
In fact, opposition leaders gave suggestion to BJP that Ramesh would give resignation from COPU and Harivansh also should withdraw his candidature from the PAC which BJP leaders did not accept. Therefore, the election was necessitated for two posts of the PAC as three candidates were in the fray.
At the end it was found that TDP MP came on top with first preference votes of 110, Bhupendra Jadav came second with 69 votes and Harivansh faired poorly with only 26 votes.
The Congress party did not mobilise all their support. Ramesh was moving in the parliament house that he would have got at least 140 votes if all the members voted on Monday. He claimed he got some votes from the BJP members too.
People were speculating about how AIADMK members voted. In fact, after this votes, opposition parties are now upbeat and took it a challenge to defeat NDA candidate in the Deputy Chairman election. But BJP floor managers are confident that what happened in the PAC election would not be repeated in the Deputy Chairman election.