Analysis| Should Manmohan Singh have sought Rajya Sabha seat?
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are still technically in a minority in the RS, although the former has used defections and abstentions smartly to get its way in the House.
Former Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh, 86, is set to become a Rajya Sabha (RS) MP from Rajasthan. He will be the fourth oldest member in the house of elders, the average age of which has been falling — it is 63 now, down from 66 five years ago.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) are still technically in a minority in the RS, although the former has used defections and abstentions smartly to get its way in the House. That’s a sharp contrast to its first term in office when most of its bills were stymied by the Opposition in the RS. Still, there is at least a semblance of opposition in this House, unlike the Lok Sabha where the BJP has a brute majority. That, and the fact that it can have RS members elected only from a handful of states, makes it imperative for the Congress to carefully weigh its choices.
The universe of candidates is large. The Congress has only 52 representatives in the Lok Sabha, and the number of worthies lined up for RS seats is high. Singh may have been a consensus candidate in Rajasthan where chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his deputy Sachin Pilot are at war, but the Congress would have done better to nominate someone younger, more energetic, and more voluble than Singh.
The BJP is actually to be admired for, largely, sticking to its 75-years rule for parliamentarians and legislators.
Singh has had a long and successful career. He was a highly-thought-of Reserve Bank of India governor. Many consider him the best finance minister the country has ever seen. And he served two consecutive terms as PM, although the second was marked by in-fighting , several corruption scams, and economic mismanagement. There were times between 2009 and 2014 that people wondered why he wasn’t stepping down. Maybe the distinction of being the only PM to have served two successive full terms after Indira Gandhi outweighed all else. That desire for power and position seems to be at work again. The Congress shouldn’t have picked Singh. Given that it did, Singh would have done well to gracefully decline.