The unexpected rise of Harivansh as RS deputy chairperson

New Delhi: The ruling BJP has never rushed to fill the vacancy for a nominated member in the Rajya Sabha this fast, and no MP was nominated to the Upper House by the President using a Constitutional provision despite his party — the JD(U) — not giving him a third term in the Upper House.

Harivansh holds not just these records. He became the first nominated MP to become the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson on April 17 in an election “boycotted” by the Opposition, claiming that the BJP had not been this keen in electing a Lok Sabha deputy speaker for the past seven years.

Why the BJP, despite having numbers and experienced in-house talent, chose to go with an “outsider” — and that too using an unusual route — to fill the vacancy is still a mystery. Harivansh’s second term ended on April 9, and the President appointed him a nominated MP the next morning. Seven days later, he was again the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson.

The BJP could have got Harivansh elected from a state, but it didn’t. Its most recent “outsider” experiment — Jagdeep Dhankhar as vice-president — had ended on a bitter note. The political grapevine was that even Harivansh’s parent party — the JD(U) — was not consulted on his renomination. Harivansh had earned the trust of the top two in the BJP: Narendra Modi and Amit Shah.

Incidentally, the new RS deputy chairperson is also a nominated MP who could not vote in the Presidential election. He is also not a representative of a state in the Rajya Sabha, which is the Council of States.

Rare feat

Harivansh, who succeeded the Congress' P J Kurien after his retirement in July 2018, is only the third non-Congress RS deputy chairperson. The other two were the Republican Party of India's B D Khobragade (December 1969 to April 1972) and the Samyukta Socialist Party's Godey Murahari (April 1972 to March 1977 in two terms).

A postgraduate in economics, Harivansh appears to be an important cog in the wheel of the BJP’s scheme of things in the Rajya Sabha, where it is inching towards dominance —to the two-thirds majority mark of 163 — by the year-end after the defection of seven of the AAP’s 10 MPs.

The Ballia-born journalist-turned-MP, who worked as an official language officer with the Bank of India for four years in Hyderabad and Patna in the early 1980s before returning to journalism, has had run-ins with the Opposition, which submitted a notice to have him removed from the deputy chairperson post. The then chairperson, M Venkaiah Naidu, rejected it.

The Opposition was upset with the way he presided over the passage of the three contentious Farm Bills, which the government was forced to subsequently withdraw owing to unprecedented farmers’ protests.

The 69-year-old has been a Rajya Sabha member from Bihar since April 10, 2014. He was reelected on April 10, 2020. He was first elected deputy chairperson on August 9, 2018, winning 125-105 against the Congress' B K Hariprasad.

After his term ended in April 2020, he was fielded again when he returned to the House in the September 14, 2020 election, in which he defeated the RJD's Manoj K Jha by voice vote.

Professional prowess

Growing up as a socialist, he hosted a meeting attended by Jayaprakash Narain at the Banaras Hindu University, where he was studying, months before the veteran leader launched his movement from Patna in Bihar. Later, he was active in the RTI and literacy movements in Jharkhand, besides associating with the liquor ban movement and Baba Amte’s Bharat Jodo Abhiyan.

He started his journalistic career in 1977 as a sub-editor in the “Dharmayug” magazine, where he worked for four years before having a four-year stint with the Bank of India. He returned to journalism as assistant editor of “Ravivar” in 1985, before becoming the chief editor of “Prabhat Khabar” four years later.

Active in the socialist circles then, he was close to Chandra Shekhar. When the latter became the prime minister, he chose Harivansh as his media advisor. This stint lasted for only seven months, after which Harivansh returned to “Prabhat Khabar”, which became known for its investigative stories under him.

Years ago, he also travelled with Chandra Shekhar when the latter embarked on a “Bharat Yatra” in 1983 against Indira Gandhi, the then PM.

In his September 2020 profile after his re-election as the deputy chairperson, DH had said that under his editorship, “Prabhat Khabar” — with the tagline “Akhbar Nahin, Aandolan” (not a newspaper but a movement) — broke many stories on the fodder scam when Lalu Prasad was the Bihar chief minister.

He grew closer to Nitish Kumar, who was initially struggling to find his feet in Bihar politics, and the JD(U) chief chose to send him to Delhi as a Rajya Sabha member in 2014.

The DH profile then said it surprised some of his journalistic peers, who viewed it as an “anti-establishment editor” becoming the “face of the establishment”. Harivansh has another six years to disprove them!