In an interesting turn of events the expelled Samajwadi party leader Amar Singh who is looking to sever his ties with his former mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav is desperately looking for a Rajya Sabha seat.
Sources say that Amar Singh approached the Assam leader Badruddin Ajmal who heads the Assam United Democratic Front and asked him for help to be elected as a member to the upper house from the state from one of the two seats which is going to the polls this month.
The AUDF has 9 MLAs, and along with the Bharatiya Janata Party with its 10 MLAs and the Asom Gana Parishad with 24 MLAs the combination of three parties is trying to win one Rajya sabha seat from the state. It is learnt that in a meeting held between the three parties, Ajmal proposed the name of Amar Singh on the grounds that he had an all-India stature, would be an asset to the state, would be able to attract investment in Assam, and in short lobbied heavily in Singh's favour. But both the BJP and the AGP turned down the suggestion saying that they had to face assembly elections next year and could not afford to bring in an outsider as it would only damage their standing.
In the 2006 assembly elections in Assam, Amar Singh along with Chandrababu Naidu had, reportedly, gone out of his way to help the AGP contest the elections. Singh provided helicopters, aircrafts and other resources turning it into a high profile election with the sole aim of damaging the Congress, but now the same AGP has turned him down citing political compulsions.
The new name which has emerged is that of a newspaper owner Jayant Barua who owns the highest selling daily in the state. Barua is seen to be a neutral candidate belonging to no party and a name on which there may be some meeting ground.
On the other side, the Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi is still in Delhi and is scheduled to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi before leaving for Guwahati as he has to present the budget on Monday. Gogoi is also reported to have made it clear to the Congress bosses that he is not in a position to bring in an outsider, again due to political compulsions.
With the growing reach of the AUDF, a primarily muslim party and now their tie up with the BJP, the chief minister would like to exploit the situation and field a muslim as the party candidate to the Rajya Sabha from the state. Sources say that while there were 39 applicants, the list has been pruned to 6, with one of the retiring members Anwara Taimur, out of the race on old age grounds. She is pushing 80 and has been told by the Congress president to take some rest.
While the chief minister is pushing the name of Dr Pervez Ahmed, son of former president Fakruddin Ali Ahmed on the grounds that the muslims had been voting for the congress both in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, he also wants to expose the AUDF-BJP tie up.
Sources say that the Congress which is short of 14 MLAs for the second seat may only field a candidate if there are a number of candidates from the other side and if there is a chance that a number of AUDF MLAs may cross vote. So far the number is being placed at 6 and may even go up further.
The Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma who is homeless and has no seat to go back to, has been trying from Assam as one of the possibilities but with the chief minister not in favour of adjusting outsiders, it is fairly certain that he would not be fielded on the first seat and it remains to be seen what happens if the congress contests for the second seat.
