With political parties now making an all-out effort to ensure unanimous polls in Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Parishad elections in Uttar Pradesh, state legislators have been left high and dry — quite literally.
With candidates confident of their unopposed election to the two Upper Houses, there has been a complete dearth of cocktails, gifts and parties that otherwise marked these elections.
“Ever since all political parties decided on unopposed elections for Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Parishad, all the colour has gone out of these polls. Earlier these elections meant good times for us. Candidates would individually woo the legislators with promises and gifts and even party leaders would get ‘suitably rewarded’ for even the second preference votes,” recalls a former Loktantrik Congress legislator.
According to his own admission, he and his colleagues had received cash gifts and SUVs from candidates in the Rajya Sabha elections, held at the turn of the century. In yet another election, legislators were gifted flats in Mumbai when a Mumbai based builder got elected to the Rajya Sabha.
“There used to be so many parties — two to three everyday — where we could haggle about the ‘price’. Even journalists would be invited to these parties and some of them even played go-betweens,” said another senior MLA.
Almost all political parties in Uttar Pradesh had been battling dissidence and cross voting by legislators which reached a crescendo in 2002 when arms dealer, Suresh Nanda, was manhandled by a group of MLAs when he came to file his nomination papers. The trend consolidated in 2006 when Independent candidate Sudhanshu Mittal lost the RS election after being reportedly “betrayed” by some MLAs.
“Since all parties were being affected by cross voting, the leaders thought it was best to ensure that the polls were held unopposed. The legislators have now lost their ‘value’ and the candidates need not woo them individually,” said a former principal secretary of the Vidhan Sabha.