New Delhi: As Manmohan Singh`s nearly 30-year-long tenure as a Rajya Sabha member ended on Friday and HD Deve Gowda lost from Tumkur seat in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, no former Prime Minister will be present in the forthcoming Budget session of the Parliament.
Parliament`s first Budget session after the constitution of the new government at Centre is scheduled to start on June 17. Deve Gowda, who served as the 11th Prime Minister of India from June 1996 to April 1997, lost to BJP`s GS Basavaraj from Tumkur Lok Sabha constituency by little over 13,000 votes.
Earlier, Deve Gowda used to regularly contest from Hassan parliamentary constituency. However, he had vacated his seat to field his grandson Prajwal Revanna from there. Soon after the Lok Sabha results were announced on May 23, Revanna, who defeated BJP`s A Manju from Hassan by a margin of 1.41 lakh votes, offered to resign from the seat to get his grandfather re-elected.
“To reinstate the confidence of JD(S) cadre, we have to fill the gap left by the defeat of HD Deve Gowda. Therefore, I have decided to tender my resignation. I want him to be victorious once again from Hassan,” said Prajwal, who was the only JD(S) candidate to be able to win his seat in Karnataka.
After his loss, Deve Gowda said, “As a former Prime Minister, I have been defeated twice. This is not a big issue. My concern is how to save a regional party. I will see that JD(S) strengthens its base. I will take responsibility and proceed forward. I am not going to blame anybody for the loss. How it happened is not to be discussed in media.”
BJP ruled out JD(S)-Congress alliance in Karnataka by winning 25 out of 28 seats. The Congress and the JD(S) received one seat each, while one seat went to an independent candidate. Similar to its performance in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress party didn`t perform well in 2019 general election too and only managed to win on 52 seats.
Due to Congress` poor performance, Manmohan Singh, who was the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014, will be missed in the upcoming Budget session of the Parliament as his nearly 30-year-long tenure as a Rajya Sabha member ended on Friday.
Singh would not be present in the Rajya Sabha for the first time since his first election from Assam in 1991 as he could not make up to the Parliament` upper House due to Congress` poor strength in the state Assembly.
The Congress party could not get him re-elected from Assam as it has only 25 MLAs as against 43 first-preference votes needed. The party even cannot send Singh from other states where Rajya Sabha seats are vacant. With the election of BJP`s Kamakhya Prasad Tasa and AGP`s Birender Prasad Baishya`s unopposed election from Assam, a total of nine seats are lying vacant in Odisha (4), Tamil Nadu (1), Bihar (2) and Gujarat (2).
Congress does not have required numbers to secure any Rajya Sabha berths in these states except Gujarat where it is eyeing to grab at least one seat. Although Singh can be sent to the House from Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan or Punjab, there are no immediate vacancies in these states. During his tenure as Rajya Sabha MP, Singh led the upper House for 10 years from 2004 to 2014 and acted as the Leader of the Opposition for six years. Singh was last elected to the House in 2013.
