Patna: The Bihar Congress witnessed protests and renewed internal dissent on Tuesday as party leaders and expelled rebels separately raised concerns over alleged irregularities in the Rajya Sabha elections and the functioning of the state unit.Congress leaders led by party’s state president Rajesh Ram staged a protest outside the party headquarters, accusing the BJP of indulging in “vote theft” and “MLA theft” during elections in Bihar and elsewhere.
The protest followed the abstention of three Congress MLAs — Surendra Kushwaha (Valmikinagar), Manoj Biswas (Forbesganj) and Manohar Prasad Singh (Manihari) — from voting in the Rajya Sabha election on Monday. Their absence helped the BJP candidate secure the fifth seat for the ruling NDA.“The BJP has been killing democracy. It not only intimidated and threatened the Congress MLAs in Bihar, but also kept them under the house arrest like situation to prevent them from casting their votes during the Rajya Sabha election in the state,” Ram alleged, adding that the administration was also misused to keep them under control. He further claimed that MLAs who did not fall for alleged inducements faced intimidation.However, two of the three MLAs — Surendra Kushwaha and Manoj Biswas — publicly rejected allegations that they had accepted any inducements or cash in return for abstaining from voting.Meanwhile, the party’s internal crisis was also on display as expelled and rebel functionaries held a separate state-level conference, announcing that they would continue their agitation for “corrective measures” within the party and would raise the issue before the central leadership in Delhi.The meeting, their first major gathering since the Nov assembly elections in which the party won only six of the 61 seats it contested, reiterated allegations of “brokers” dominating party affairs and cash transactions during ticket distribution.“Our aim is to free the state Congress from the undue influence exercised by the ‘bichauliyas (middlemen),’ brokers and ‘saudebaji (cash transactions)’ and to save the party’s state unit,” the rebel leaders said.“Today, the state Congress is at its lowest. The main responsibility for it lies with the present state leadership and AICC incharge. The way the party has suffered losses from the assembly elections to the Rajya Sabha poll, it has shamed the entire state,” one of the expelled leaders said while addressing the conference, adding that their objective was to strengthen party leader Rahul Gandhi.
