Presidential election- U’khand Congress searches for black sheep in its flock
Sunday, 24 July 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
LoP Arya sends a letter to party high command on the issue of cross voting and the absenteeism by party MLAs in election
Embarrassed after at least one of its MLAs was found involved in cross voting in the recent election of President of India, the leadership of Uttarakhand Congress has adopted a tough stance on maintaining the inter party discipline. On Saturday the senior leaders of the party met at the Rajiv Bhawan to discuss the proposed Tiranga Yatra. It is learnt that the senior leaders that included the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Karan Mahara, Leader of Opposition (LoP) in state assembly Yashpal Arya, former PCC presidents Pritam Singh, Ganesh Godiyal and former speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal held discussions on the cross voting in the election of President of India and the need for unity in the party.
Later talking to the media persons, the PCC president Mahara said that LoP Arya has sent a letter to the party high command in which the entire episode is explained. He said that two MLAs of Congress party Tilak Raj Behed and Rajendra Bhandari had abstained from voting. Mahara said that while Behed is very ill, Bhandari has said that he was busy in a religious ceremony in his village in which it is considered inauspicious to cross the river.
The LoP Yashpal Arya termed the absence of Rajendra Bhandari from voting as unfortunate and painful. He said that the party would hold a series of meetings and would try to identify the person who had gone against the party and was involved in cross voting.
He said that prior to the voting of the Presidential election, a meeting of Congress Legislature Party (CLP) was convened on July 17, 2022. In this meeting an appeal was made to the MLAs to vote in favour of the official candidate of united opposition Yashwant Sinha and a training session for the legislators was also held on the occasion.
It is worth mentioning here that the NDA candidate Draupadi Murmu secured 51 votes while Sinha got only 15 votes from Uttarakhand in the Presidential election. There are 70 MLAs in Uttarakhand assembly and out of them 67 had cast their vote in the election of President. In the state assembly, the BJP has 47 MLAs, the Congress 19, BSP two and there are two independents. The BSP and independents had declared their support for Murmu. In such a situation NDA’s Murmu was expected to receive 51 votes which she finally received. However if one vote of BJP’s absentee (Chandan Ram Das ) is deducted and it is assumed that the vote which was cancelled was of a Congress member, at least one MLA of Congress has cross voted in favour of Murmu and speculations are rife about this black sheep.
