A screening panel to shortlist potential Congress candidates from Bihar for the Lok Sabha election met on March 30 but it did not discuss the contentious Purnea seat.
“We are not bothered who is saying what as we are focused on doing our best in the nine seats that has been allotted to us,” said a senior Congress leader, trying to downplay the threat of five-term MP Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav standing as rebel candidate from Purnea seat.
“Look at Nikhil babu [former IPS officer Nikhil Kumar]. He can’t contest from the Aurangabad but he hasn’t made any public statement. We won’t be encouraging any friendly fight at Purnea,”the leader added.
The Purnea seat has not only gone to Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) that is leading the mahagatbandhan or grand alliance in Bihar but the party has already declared Bima Bharati as the official candidate.
But Mr. Yadav, who merged his Jan Adhikar Party with the Congress on March 20, has staked claim to the seat. He had represented thrice earlier and was hoping to contest on a Congress ticket.
But a few leaders questioned his induction, given his image of being a “baahubali”.
“In the early 2000s when Lalu Prasad was the Chief Minister, people feared Pappu Yadav’s gang. Of course, now he has tried hard to acquire a Robinhood-like image in Kosi-Seemanchal,” senior leader of Bihar Congress Kishore Kumar Jha said.
The party, the source said, was banking on the calculation that Mr. Pappu Yadav’s induction would have strengthened it in Seemanchal region in north-eastern Bihar that has important Lok Sabha seats like Madhepura, Supaul, Katihar and Kisanganj.
Mr. Pappu Yadav, whose wife Ranjeet Ranjan, who is a senior Congress leader and a Rajya Sabha MP, had credited Priyanka Gandhi Vadra with his induction.
“When Priyanka Gandhiji called me to come and join the Congress, I did not think twice,” Mr. Pappu Yadav said while speaking to presspersons in Purnea on Friday.
However, the Congress did not factor the frosty relationship between Lalu Prasad’s family and Mr. Pappu, who had been expelled from the RJD earlier.
Mr. Pappu Yadav, who detests being called a baahubali now, still battles the tag of being an outsider by many Congress veterans.
“This seems to be new tradition that outsiders are made to feel important and old-timers are ignored,” Mr. Jha said.
