Pramod Tiwari likely to replace Kharge as the next LoP in Rajya Sabha

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Aurangzeb Naqshbandi
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Pramod Tiwari

New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Pramod Tiwari has emerged as the front-runner to be the next Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Rajya Sabha.

He will replace Mallikarjun Kharge who is all set to be the next Congress president.

Tiwari, 70, is a nine-time legislator from Rampur Khas assembly seat in Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh.

Tiwari got elected to the Upper House of Parliament for the second term from Rajasthan in July this year. His first term was from December 2013 to April 2018.

The dice are loaded heavily in favour of Tiwari as he comes from the politically and electorally important state of Uttar Pradesh.

Since Kharge is from Karnataka in South India, the Congress high command was looking for someone from North or West India, basically the Hindi heartland of the country.

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Digvijaya Singh is the other contender from western India. However, there is a significant trust deficit between him and the leadership. Perhaps that was the reason why the Congress high command did not choose him as the party's presidential candidate. 

Besides, the past controversies over his remarks on various contentious issues such as Batla House encounter and the so-called Hindu terror also weighed heavily on the mind of the leadership.

He had called the Batla House encounter fake and alleged that the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was imparting training to Hindu youths to make bombs.

Singh, 75, had initially decided to contest the upcoming Congress president's election but later withdrew in favour of Kharge who had the full backing of the Gandhis - Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

The Congress knows that its revival at the national level depends on its resurgence in the Hindi heartland though Rahul Gandhi's focus in the recent past has been South India, especially since he got elected to the Lok Sabha from Wayanad in Kerala.

Kharge's elevation as the Congress president remains a mere formality now, and that seems to have marred the chance of former finance minister P Chidambaram who hails from Tamil Nadu to be the next LoP.

His prospects could brighten only if the Congress high command decides to change its leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who hails from West Bengal. But that seems like a big ask.

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