BJP's Quest for Kurmi Leader Ends With RPN Singh. Is He Worth the Choice?

RPN Singh lost the last 2 consecutive Lok Sabha polls. He could muster only 13% votes polled in his last election.

Former Member of Parliament and Congress In-Charge of Jharkhand, RPN Singh tweeted on 25 January morning that he is beginning a new chapter in his political career.

(Photo: PTI)

Former Union minister and Congress incharge of Jharkhand, RPN Singh tweeted on 25 January morning that he was beginning a new chapter in his political career. He attached the resignation letter addressed to Congress working President Sonia Gandhi, signed at 8 am. He joined the BJP on the same day.

For the Congress, it is being termed as a big loss of a young face but the question is how the entry of RPN Singh changes anything in the battleground of Uttar Pradesh. Will RPN Singh prove to be a worthy ‘Kurmi’ knight for the BJP after the exit of Swami Prasad Maurya?

MLA Thrice and a Union Minister in UPA II

RPN Singh hails from Padrauna in Kushinagar district in Uttar Pradesh. His father CPN Singh was a Member of Parliament (MP) from Kushinagar in 1980s and a minister in the Cabinet of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

RPN Singh had been a member of the UP assembly in 1996, 2002, and 2007. In 2009 he was elected as an MP from Kushinagar and went on to become a Union minister in 2011 in UPA II.

Now, he has joined the BJP.

The defection of Swami Prasad Maurya to the Samajwadi Party (SP) was being touted as the masterstroke of Akhilesh Yadav. His exit gave the impression that BJP had not been able to manage OBC leaders in its camp, or at least headlines said so.

In a counter move, BJP has now roped in RPN Singh, hailing from Padrauna, the seat Maurya won in 2012 and 2017. Singh had been an MLA from the Padrauna assembly seat for three consecutive terms before Maurya won it for the BSP in 2012 in a by-poll after RPN Singh moved to Delhi as an MP.

In 1996, RPN Singh won Padrauna with a 46 percent vote share. BJP’s Surendra Kumar Shukla with a 34 percent vote share stood second while the SP was a distant third. In 2002, RPN Singh again won the seat with a 32 percent vote share, defeating Baleshwar Yadav of the SP. Yadav secured 22 percent votes while BJP’s Surendra Kumar Shukla was the second runner-up.

RPN Singh won the Padrauna seat in 2007 with a 20 percent vote share, defeating Aadhya Shukla of the BSP. Both Shukla got 14 percent voter share, a little more than BJP’s Surendra Kumar Shukla who also secured 14 percent votes.

In 2012, Swami Prasad Maurya won the Padrauna seat in a by-poll on a BSP ticket with a 22 percent vote share. He defeated Congress candidate Rajesh Kumar Jaiswal who secured 18 percent votes while BJP’s Ramdhari Prasad Gupta was the second runner up with a 17 percent vote share.

In 2017, Swami Prasad Maurya shifted base to the BJP and secured a convincing win with a 44 percent vote share. BSP’s Javed Iqbal secured 25 percent votes while Shiv Kumari Devi of Congress was a distant third with 19 percent voter share.

RPN Singh Defeated Maurya in the 2009 LS Elections

It is not the first time that RPN Singh would be face to face with Maurya in a political tussle in Kushinagar. Singh defeated Maurya in the 2009 Lok Sabha election with a margin of around 20,000 votes.

RPN Singh had secured 30 percent vote share while Maurya got 27 percent. BJP’s Vijay Dube stood third with 22 percent votes while the SP was a distant fourth with just seven percent vote share.

Losing Two Consecutive Elections

The Modi wave demolished the Kushinagar castle of RPN Singh in 2014. He managed to secure 29 percent votes while BJP’s Rajesh Pandey alias Guddu registered a thumping win with a 38 percent vote share. BSP’s Dr Sangam stood third with 14 percent votes.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, BJP surged further as its candidate Vijay Dubey won with a 56 percent vote share. RPN Singh was a distant third with just 13 percent votes and even lost his deposit. NP Kushwaha of SP was the runner-up with 24 percent votes.

The political stock of RPN Singh had plummeted due to the Modi wave but his influence was also waning in Kushinagar.

The OBC Focus

Both RPN Singh and Maurya belong to the OBC community. Singh has a wide support base in Kurmi and Sainthwars while Maurya relies on Kushwaha, Maurya, and Saini support. Padrauna assembly seat is dominated by Kushwaha voters while a significant chunk of Muslim voters holds the key to winning. The urban voters in Kushinagar generally side with the BJP.

Though both father and son had won the Kushinagar seat, the influence of Singhs is limited to this seat only. On the other hand, Maurya who has shifted parties twice in the last five years, has a wider support base in SC-ST communities which affects many political outcomes in Purvanchal.

Moreover, Maurya’s caste base is deciding voters on many assembly segments in Balia, Ghazipur, Bundelkhand, and the Prayagraj area.

“Swami Prasad Maurya is a bigger leader. RPN Singh has failed to establish himself as an OBC leader. BJP was facing negative perception after the high-profile exit of Maurya and other cabinet ministers, so the party is trying to show that it’s a two-way process. The entry of Aparna Yadav was also part of the same plan, so is RPN Singh. He is definitely a known face in political circles,” Manoj Kumar Singh, a senior journalist based in Gorakhpur, said.

BJP has brought in a leader who secured just 13 percent vote share in his last election to counter the influence of Swami Prasad Maurya. Congress lost young promising faces like Jitin Prasad and Jyotiraditya Scindia earlier, but it is farfetched that RPN Singh could prove to be a replacement for Maurya for the BJP.

But for BJP, its war of perception and his entry in the party may yield some positive impact, hopefully.

(The article was first published on Quint Hindi. It has been translated by Arvind Singh. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)