For 73-year-old Jagdambika Pal, a four-term MP from Doomariyaganj in Uttar Pradesh, the appointment as chairman of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf Amendment Bill comes after a 30-year political career across parties. Pal is best known, however, for serving as the chief minister of UP for all of one day. This was when Pal had co-founded the Akhil Bhartiya Loktantrik Congress and given support to the then BJP government led by Kalyan Singh in Uttar Pradesh in the late 1990s. In 1998, however, Pal withdrew his party’s support to the BJP government. Governor Romesh Bhandari dismissed the government and Pal was invited to stake claim after he said he had a majority. Bhandari's decision was challenged in the Allahabad High Court, which directed a floor test. In the floor test, Kalyan Singh managed to save his government, ending Pal’s nano stint. The UP veteran who belongs to Bastri district of UP had started off, like many others, with the Congress. From 1993 to 2007, he had an uninterrupted run as Basti MLA. This did not see a break even when, in 1996, he left the Congress briefly to partner up with a faction led by senior Congress leader Narayan Dutt Tiwari. The All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) survived just a year. After experimenting with his own party and earning the stripe of being a CM, however briefly, Pal returned to the Congress and contested the 2002 Assembly elections on the party’s ticket from Basti. A sitting MLA of the Congress, after winning again in 2007, he contested the Lok Sabha elections from the Doomariyaganj seat on a Congress ticket in 2009, and won by 76,000 votes. When the Modi wave came around in 2014, Pal was among the leaders who left the Congress for the BJP, alleging that “seniors were no longer respected within the party”. Sources close to him say that Pal expected to get a Union ministry after winning the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Domariyaganj, and was upset at not getting one. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, he won the seat for the third time, by a handsome margin of about 42,000 votes. The reason for Pal’s long electoral success is believed to be his approachability, as attested by voters in Doomariyaganj, a constituency located near the Nepal border. Another reason, sources in the Congress say, is Pal’s cordial relations across parties, and communities, including Muslims. “He is a humble leader who is not aggressive but connects well with people. He is known for his hospitality as well. This is the reason he has won elections continuously, fielded by the Congress or the BJP,” a Congress leader said, adding that Pal’s “seniority as well as acceptability, including among the minorities”, may be the reason he was chosen as the Joint Committee head.
