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Bureaucrat-turned-political strategist among SP’s picks for Rajya Sabha
Former U.P. chief secy Alok Ranjan along with Jaya Bachchan and Ramji Lal Suman file papers for Feb 27 polls
Former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Alok Ranjan, a retired IAS officer of the 1978 batch who later became a political strategist and author, is poised to enter the Rajya Sabha as a member of the Samajwadi Party (SP).
At the age of 67, Ranjan, alongside four-time SP RS member Jaya Bachchan and four-time former Firozabad Lok Sabha member Ramji Lal Suman, submitted their nomination papers for membership to the upper house of Parliament in the presence of party chief Akhilesh Yadav at the Central Hall in Vidhan Bhawan.
After filing his papers, Alok Ranjan said: “I am thankful to SP national chief Akhilesh Yadav for nominating me for Rajya Sabha. I will make contribution keeping in mind the SP ideology. I will do my best for social justice to all and contribute towards the development of the state and the country.”
Ramji Lal Suman said: “I will raise issues related to the state and the country emphatically in the Rajya Sabha. Thanks to Akhilesh ji for nominating me for RS membership.”
Once the three are formally elected, the SP will have a total of five RS members—a backward (Ram Gopal Yadav), a Muslim (Javed Ali Khan), a woman (Jaya Bachchan), a forward caste (Alok Ranjan) and a Dalit (Ramji Lal Suman)--in sync the party’s PDA strategy for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
PDA, the term coined by SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, stands for (Pichada, Dalit and Alpsankhyak—that is backwards, dalits, and minorities). Taken together, PDA forms roughly 85% of Uttar Pradesh’s population. “The three filed their nominations in two sets each. The nominations will be scrutinised on February 16,” said returning officer Brij Bhushan Dubey in a statement.
Ten Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh are getting vacant on April 2. Based on its current strength in the U.P. assembly, whose members vote in Rajya Sabha polls, the BJP can send 7 members to the upper house of Parliament while the Samajwadi Party is the only opposition party that would have the remaining three.
The BJP declared its seven candidates on Sunday. If none of the parties field any extra candidate, there will not be any voting for the seats—and all the 10 will be elected. The SP, by way of its increased strength in the U.P. assembly (from 47 in 2017 to 108 in 2022 assembly polls ), is now in a position to send three members.
The SP currently has three members in the Rajya Sabha--Ram Gopal Yadav, Javed Ali Khan and Jaya Bachchan. A candidate would need 37 first preference votes to secure a seat in the Rajya Sabha and thus the SP would comfortably be able to send three members to the upper house.
The last date for the filing of the nomination is February 15. Polling will be held on February 27 and the results will be announced the same day. Talking about the PDA factor, SP national secretary Rajendra Chaudhary said: “We already have a Muslim RS member and a backward RS member. Now, we will also have a “dalit”, “agada” (forward caste) member (Alok Ranjan) and “aadhi aabadi” (women) member (Jaya Bachchan). A in PDA also stands for “agada” and “aadhi aabadi”.”
Alok Ranjan, 67, is a former bureaucrat who served as U.P. chief secretary between 2014 and 2016 when Akhilesh Yadav was the chief minister (between 2012 and 2017). A 1978 batch U.P. officer, Ranjan is an alumnus of St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and did his MBA (PGDM) from IIM, Ahmedabad. He is also an author and thought-leader/speaker.
After his retirement, the Akhilesh Yadav government appointed him as an advisor to the CM and chairperson of UP Industrial Development Corporation. He has been associated with the SP since 2017 and is in the party’s think tank.
“He had played a crucial role in the execution of big ticket projects such as Lucknow Metro, Agra-Lucknow Expressway etc during his stint as the chief secretary”, said an SP leader. Since his retirement, Alok Ranjan has also served in various positions in various industries, commerce and educational bodies.
He has written several books. Since 2017, Alok Ranjan has been working closely with Akhilesh Yadav as the SP’s think tank and a war room manager. He had played an important role in drawing up the 2022 UP assembly elections manifesto of the party. He is the first retired bureaucrat whom the SP has nominated for the Rajya Sabha.
Jaya Bachchan, 75, is a four-time SP Rajya Sabha member and will be only second in the SP to get a fifth term. The first one is SP chief national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav who is currently serving his fifth term. Jaya Bachchan, an actor and a Padma Shri recipient, is the wife of actor Amitabh Bachchan. She is known as a blunt and forthright speaker in Rajya Sabha.
Ramji Lal Suman, 73, is a dalit and a four-time Lok Sabha member from Firozabad (twice as Janata Party and twice as Samajwadi Party candidate) hails from Hathras. He has also been the SP candidate from Hathras in the 2014 and 2019 LS polls but did not win.
He is a national general secretary of the Samajwadi Party and has been with the SP founder the late Mulayam Singh Yadav since their Janta Dal days. He won the Firozabad seat for the first time in 1977 when he was barely 27. He then won the seat again as the Janata Party candidate in 1989, then in 1999 and 2004 as the SP candidate.
He entered politics in his student days when an agitation broke out after the murder of two students of MG Polytechnic, Hathras in 1971. He is a heavyweight Dalit SP leader with influence in Firozabad, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Hathras and Aligarh Lok Sabha seats.
