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Journalism of Courage
He was once one of Nitish Kumar’s confidants and just two years ago the Bihar chief minister called him the future of the Janata Dal (United) after he took over as the party’s national president. But those days may seem ages ago for R C P Singh, or Ram Chandra Prasad Singh, who resigned as Union Minister of Steel on Wednesday, a day before his term in the Rajya Sabha expired.
The JD(U) did not renominate Singh to the Upper House allegedly because he fell out with Kumar. Now, out in the cold, his road back to political rehabilitation in the JD(U) looks tough as not only Kumar but JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan Singh, or Lalan Singh, and current JD(U) parliamentary board chairperson Upendra Kushwaha are old rivals who would like to keep him marginalised in the party.
Though Singh has tried to deny that his relationship with Kumar has deteriorated, at a recent interaction with the media, asked if he was still “the Hanuman (devoted follower)” of the Bihar CM, he paused before replying, “Let me correct you, my name is Ram Chandra.”
After handing over the charge of the steel ministry to Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday, Singh said he would like to “spend time guiding and training youth to hone their skills” and added that he also wanted to read books. The JD(U) leader suggested that he could help the party mobilise the youth, the task once assigned to poll strategist Prashant Kishor when he was the JD(U) national vice-president.
But neither Nitish Kumar nor Lalan Singh has talked about the role RCP Singh will play going forward. Senior JD(U) leader Bijendra Prasad Yadav said on Thursday, “It is up to the party president to decide what role RCP should play in the party.”
Some senior leaders in the BJP are surprised that RCP, once the JD(U)’s “organisation man”, has been marginalised in this manner but many in the JD(U) were reportedly apprehensive about the former minister’s proximity to the BJP. That is said to have led to his downfall.
“If someone wished RCP to do an Eknath Shinde at some stage, it was wishful thinking as Nitish Kumar remains not just the unquestioned JD(U) but also the NDA Bihar leader,” said a JD(U) leader. Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan recently acknowledged as much by calling him the “NDA leader in Bihar”.
RCP Singh, however, may draw some hope from the fact that in the past Nitish has restored the lost position in the hierarchy of those leaders who had fallen out with him. Both Lalan Singh and Kushwaha had quit the party after run-ins with the Bihar CM but managed to return to his good books and regain their positions at the top of the party hierarchy.
But the former Union minister will not have it easy. While Kushwaha, a seasoned politician with electoral experience, will sense an opportunity to further consolidate his position in the party now that RCP is out in the cold, Lalan Singh will like to extract his pound of flesh as he could not become a Union minister in 2019 after RCP put forward his own name for consideration as the sole JD(U) leader in the Narendra Modi-led government’s Cabinet. RCP also reportedly resisted Lalan Singh’s return to the JD(U) fold in 2013 but failed.
