All three current parliamentarians, including Union minister of state for external affairs Rajkumar Ranjan Singh from the vital seat of inner Manipur, were dropped by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday when it announced candidates for two seats in Rajasthan and one in Manipur.
Two waves of voting are planned for both states: the first will take place on April 19 and the second on April 26. On June 4, there will be a vote count.
Singh, who won the seat in 2019, was eliminated by the BJP and replaced with state education minister Thounaojam Basanta Kumar Singh on its sixth list, which was made public on Tuesday.
The BJP is only running for one of the two Lok Sabha seats in the northeastern state that has been engulfed in violence since May 3 of last year. It has chosen to endorse ally and Naga People’s Front nominee Kachui Timothy Zimik, a retired Indian Revenue Service officer, instead of fielding a candidate from the Outer Manipur constituency.
“I thank all the members of the central election committee of BJP and state leaders for giving me this opportunity to contest the parliamentary polls,” Basanta Kumar Singh, 59, a former Indian Police Service officer who currently represents Nambol seat in Bishnupur district in the Manipur assembly, told reporters at the BJP state headquarters in Imphal.
Kanhaiya Lal Meena from Dausa and Indu Devi Jatav from Karauli-Dholpur, a seat set aside for Scheduled Castes, were the BJP’s nominees in Rajasthan. Manoj Rajoria of Karauli-Dholpur and Jaskaur Meena of Dausa, two sitting lawmakers, were both removed.
The Meiteis, one of the populations enmeshed in the ethnic conflict that has claimed at least 219 lives in the state, dominate the inner Manipur seat, which the BJP first won in 1999. It includes the capital Imphal and its surrounding areas.
Basanta Kumar Singh, the son of former Union minister Thounaojam Chaoba Singh, is running against actor Rajkumar Somorendro, who has been fielded by the Manipur Peoples Party, Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Angomcha Bimol Akoijam of the Congress, and Republican Party of India (Athawale) member Maheshwar Thounoujam.
The seat was won in 2019 by 71-year-old Ranjan Singh, a former Manipur University professor and registrar. In 2021, he was named Union minister of state for education and foreign affairs. Last year, his house in Imphal was attacked by a mob in May and later burnt down in June by a mob as part of clashes between armed mobs of Meiteis and Kukis.
While there was no immediate response from Ranjan Singh, a senior state BJP leader, who did not wish to be named, said: “The main reason why Ranjan Singh was dropped was his lack of acceptance among Meitei voters, who feel he did not raise his voice about Manipur in Parliament. Though he’s a very capable leader, he couldn’t say things which were against the party’s directives. But voters in Imphal don’t realise this. His age was also a factor that went against him.”
Importantly, Ranjan Singh had urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a letter earlier this month to establish a mechanism that might convene respectable civil society organisations from the Kuki-Zo and Meitei communities for peace negotiations.
Singh claimed, without mentioning specific people, that “a few political leaders, a handful of armed groups, and wrongly motivated scoundrels” are preventing Manipur from returning to peace and normalcy. He asked Modi to make sure that rebels and armed militias aren’t “coerced or influenced” by civil society organisations on either side.
The BJP has nominated Kanhaiya Lal Meena from the Dausa seat in Rajasthan, and Indu Devi Jatav from Karauli-Dholpur, a seat designated for Scheduled Caste. Sitting lawmakers Jaskaur Meena from Dausa and Manoj Rajoria from Karauli-Dholpur were dropped.
Meena and state agricultural minister Kirodi Lal Meena were both in Dausa trying to get the ticket for their family members. Nevertheless, the party declined to field either of them. Supporters of Kirodi Lal Meena are not thrilled with the choice, according to a person with knowledge of the events.
Rajasthan has twenty-five seats in the Lok Sabha. The BJP has not yet selected a candidate for the Bhilwara seat, but it has released the names of 24 contenders thus far.
