I’m Cong candidate for Ranchi: Choudhary

Ranchi: Ram Tahal Choudhary, the five-time former BJP MP from Ranchi, on Friday claimed that he would be the Congress candidate from the Ranchi Lok Sabha seat after meeting AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge in New Delhi following his switching over to the grand old party on Thursday. The seat goes to poll on May 25 in the sixth phase.Choudhary’s meeting with Kharge, accompanied by state Congress president Rajesh Thakur, AICC’s Jharkhand-in-charge Ghulam Ahmad Mir and other senior leaders of the party, also fuelled his claims that he is the Ranchi candidate. Talking to TOI over the phone from Delhi, Choudhary said, “There are no ifs and buts about it. I was benched by BJP a month before election five years ago. So don’t go by votes I fetched last time as I did not have enough time to campaign. This time, the story will be different.”In the 2019 election, Choudhary was disallowed to be a candidate based on the age factor. He, however, contested as an independent and finished third behind BJP’s Sanjay Seth and Congress’s runner-up Subodh Kant Sahay. He secured a little over 30,000 votes. Congress insiders also said Choudhary could be fielded by the party instead of Sahay, who was a three-time MP and served as the Union minister of tourism in the cabinet of former PM Manmohan Singh. He had lost two consecutive elections from the Ranchi seat in 2014 and 2019 and seemed reluctant to contest this time, the insiders said.Choudhary, who hails from the Kurmi community, holds considerable sway among the rural voters of the constituency which comprises Ranchi, Hatia, Khijri, Silli, Kanke and Ichagarh assembly segments. When prodded whether Sahay would make way for him, Choudhary said, “He wished me well and accompanied me while meeting the Congress president. I used to win the seat for BJP and the voters associated with the party symbol due to me.”Sahay did not respond to TOI’s calls when contacted for a comment on the development and his opinions on the Ranchi constituency candidate. Notably, Congress has fielded candidates in Hazaribag, Lohardaga and Khunti seats but is yet to reveal the names in the remaining four seats of its share with JMM and RJD within the INDIA block. While Thakur did not respond to TOI’s calls, the party’s state media in-charge Rajesh Thakur said, “The final decision will be made by the national leadership as far as the candidates are concerned.”