Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has rewarded his trusted Principal Secretary Ram Chandra Prasad Singh with a Rajya Sabha seat, JD(U) sources said on Monday.
Singh's candidature for one of the two Rajya Sabha seats going to the kitty of the JD(U) in Bihar was 'almost final' pending last minute technical glitches arising out of his voluntary retirement from IAS service being accepted by the Uttar Pradesh government, the parent cadre of the senior bureaucrat, sources told PTI.
JD (U)'s prospective first choice candidate for the two Rajya Sabha seat from Bihar has reached Lucknow where he will meet the senior officials to submit his resignation with a request for its quick acceptance to enable him to contest the biennial polls for the upper house of parliament, they said.
The state unit JD (U) President Vijay Chaudhary hailed the decision to field Singh, and said he will prove to be an asset to the party in national politics.
However, the party leaders were yet to make up their mind on its candidate for the second Rajya Sabha seat with the JD(U) national president Sharad Yadav's close confidant KC Tyagi and a senior leader from the 'Koeri' backward caste Upendra Kushwaha's names doing the rounds in the ruling party circles.
A final decision about the name of the second candidate will be taken once the Chief Minister returned to Patna after winding up the fourth stage of his 'Vishwas Yatra,', the state JD (U) president said.
The JD (U), with 82 legislators in kitty, is set to win two of the five Rajya Sabha seats going for polls on June 17 next, on its own with each candidate requiring 41 votes for outright victory.
The junior ruling coalition party the BJP has already cleared the name of senior leader and former Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy from its quota. However, the ruling coalition might consider putting a fourth candidate in the hope of an improbable victory with the opposition RJD-LJP alliance still short of the numbers to secure victory of its quota of two candidates in the context that the state unit Congress has appealed to the party high command not to extend support to RJD and LJP in the Rajya Sabha polls.
The Congress, with 10 MLAs, was also toying with the idea of abstaining from voting in the biennial polls for the five Rajya Sabha and seven Vidhan Parishad seats in Bihar. PTI
