On Wednesday, the BJP decided to field Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia from Asansol in West Bengal against “Bihari Babu’ Shatrughan Singh who won the last election on a Trinamool ticket.
The announcement of Ahluwalia as the BJP nominee has turned the electoral battle into a battle between two Biharis in West Bengal.
The distance between the Kadamkuan residence of Sinha and of Ahluwalia’s home in Boring road in Patna is less than 5 kms. Ahluwalia, for a long time, was the president of the Gurudwara Harmandir Sahib at Patna Sahib, the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh before losing the election in 2012.
Ahluwalia is however, not the first choice for the BJP who had fielded Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh from the seat. However, after protests erupted over the lewd content of his songs, Singh’s name was dropped. Not many are aware that Ahluwalia originally belongs to the Bhumihar , a forward community of Bihar.His father had converted to Sikhism. He is not a rare case. Inder Singh Namdhari, former speaker of the Jharkhand assembly, six times MLA who was also elected as a Member of Parliament from Chatra, Jharkhand, is also a Bhumihar who converted to Sikhism.
Former MLA from Arwal, Bihar and strongmen, Krishna Prasad Singh alias Krishan Sardar, who won as an Independent and then on a Congress(Indira ) ticket in the 80s, was also a Bhumihar turned Sardar who established the “Bhumihar sena” that took on the Left militant groups active in rural Patna and the neighbouring Jehanabad. He was later murdered in broad daylight in the market-place in Arwal.
A close confidante of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and then of Sonia Gandhi, Ahluwalia made his debut in the Rajya Sabha in 1986 where he was counted among the three closest associate of Rajiv- the other two being KK Tewari who was elected twice to the Lok Sabha from Buxar, Bihar and Mani Shankar Aiyer. When former President of India, Gyani Zail Sigh was accused by Congress leaders of trying to dislodge the Rajiv Gandhi government, it was these three leaders who were fielded to attack Singh. They were known as the member of the ‘shouting brigade” of Rajya Sabha
Ahluwalia has been elected four times to Rajya Sabha- twice he was sent by the Congress and then again twice by the BJP before he contested for the 2014 Lok Sabha from Darjeeling and the 2019 elections from Bardhaman-Durgapur.