BJP pulls up Jayant Sinha for V-day no-show, not campaigning for Hazaribagh candidate

HAZARIBAG/RANCHI: Former Union minister and outgoing Hazaribag MP Jayant Sinha was handed a show-cause notice by Jharkhand unit of BJP for not campaigning for party candidate Manish Jaiswal and not casting his vote during polling for the seat, which was held on Monday.

Jayant, a two-time MP, had stepped aside from electoral politics before BJP announced its candidates for 13 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats in Jharkhand in March and announced that he will work for climate change in India and around the world.

Jayant's media secretary Anil Kumar Sinha said the outgoing MP might reply to the notice on Wednesday. On Sinha's whereabouts, Anil said, "We are not aware, but he is not in Hazaribag."

BJP sources claimed that the party brass was miffed at Jayant after his son Arish shared stage with Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, when the latter canvassed for Congress candidate JP Patel at a rally in Barhi on May 13.

BJP had picked its incumbent Hazaribagh MLA Manish Jaiswal as Jayant's replacement as the party wanted to field a fresh face. Jayant had posted a video message on his X handle and urged the electorate to vote for Jaiswal. They also replaced its candidates in Chatra, Dhanbad and Dumka (ST) Lok Sabha seats along with Hazaribagh after ground assessment.

Jayant's father Yashwant Sinha had slammed BJP's decision to pick Jaiswal. The 86-year-old, who canvassed extensively for Congress and even suffered a heat stroke, said Jayant was highly qualified and better educated than Jaiswal and the latter could not match his son's quality.

"In 2019 elections, Jayant retained Hazaribag for the second time by defeating the Congress candidate (Gopal Prasad Sahu) by more than 4.5 lakh votes, which is more than PM Narendra Modi's victory margin in Varanasi five years ago," he had told TOI on poll eve.

Aditya Sahu, a Rajya Sabha MP and the party's general secretary, had served the notice to Jayant hours after voting for the seat ended and asked him to reply within 48 hours.