The Congress party has fielded former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar’s son Anshul Avijit in the Patna Sahib constituency. Anshul, the national spokesperson of INC was in the news since after his mother announced her unwillingness to contest from the Sasaram seat of Bihar. Speculations were doing rounds that Anshul might be roped in from the constituency for the Lok Sabha elections.
Delving into dynasty
These speculations were supported by the fact that not just Meira Kumar remained a two-time MP from the constituency, but Anshul’s grandfather Jagjivan Ram also was eight-time MP from Sasaram since 1952.
Anshul has inherited politics from his parents. But this candidate who is perhaps the most qualified candidate of Bihar, having pursued his M.Phil and PhD from the prestigious Cambridge University, has been fielded from Patna Sahib, the constituency reigned by BJP’s star politician Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Who from Sasaram?
On the other hand, Manoj Kumar Bharti has been given the ticket to Sasaram. For unversed, Manoj Kumar entered politics in 2016-17 and of course, he contested the Sasaram seat in the 2019 elections but from BSP, only to lose it to a BJP candidate. Meira Kumar also lost the seat in 2014 and 2019 to a BJP candidate.
Will Anshul remain ‘Avijit’?
How fit is Anshul Avijit for Patna Sahib? Why did Congress inject him there? Anshul is certainly the national spokesperson of the party but has barely been active on different platforms and people haven’t heard him quite often. So, while inheriting politics in DNA might help, Anshul never did anything on his own to bag a seat.
Relation between INC and Patna
Since its inception, when this seat wasn’t called Patna Sahib but Patna, Congress bagged this constituency only thrice. For the first time, it lost it to the Communist Party in 1967. Since then it has belonged to the Communist Party, Janata Party, Janata Dal, once to RJD, and then to the BJP. Even during the Manmohan Singh government, when the Congress party grabbed the majority, this seat went to the BJP in 2009 with Shatrughan Sinha as its MP.
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If one thinks it was the charm of a Bollywood celebrity, the very same shotgun contested from the seat on the Congress’s ticket in 2019, only to lose it to the BJP’s Ravi Shankar Prasad. Hence, Patna Sahib is a hard nut to crack for the Cambridge scholar.
Even if contested from the Sasaram seat, the chances of his victory were very thin. Why? Because his mother, the veteran leader Meira Kumar lost it to the BJP candidate twice in the Modi wave.
