Justice PC Ghose sworn in as Lokpal

NEW DELHI: President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday administered the oath of office to Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose as the country’s first Lokpal.

The oath was administered at a ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Former Chief Justices of different high courts — Justices Dilip B Bhosale, Pradip Kumar Mohanty, Abhilasha Kumari— besides sitting Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh HC Ajay Kumar Tripathi were appointed as judicial members in the Lokpal.

Former first woman chief of Sashastra Seema Bal Archana Ramasundaram, ex-maharashtra chief secretary Dinesh Kumar Jain, former IRS officer Mahender Singh and Gujarat cadre EX-IAS officer Indrajeet Prasad Gautam are the Lokpal’s non-judicial members. In Bihar, the three-party National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the state, comprising the BJP, the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) on Saturday announced the names of candidates for 39 out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The lone exception is Khagaria, which has been allocated to the LJP in line with a 17-17-6 seatsharing deal between the three parties.

Announcing the names at a joint press conference at the BJP headquarters in Patna, BJP national general secretary and party incharge for Bihar affairs, Bhupendra Yadav, said Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will be contesting the Patna Sahib seat in place of incumbent MP Shatrughan Sinha. The sitting MP from Nawada, Union minister Giriraj Singh, has been shifted to Begusarai after the former was allocated to the LJP.

Sinha has been dropped from the BJP’S list of 17 candidates. The actor-turned-politician has been critical of the political line and decisions taken by the Narendra Modi government, including the November 2016 invalidation of high-value banknotes. Sinha is likely to join the Congress on Sunday and seek to reclaim his seat on its symbol.

The NDA alliance will be up against the Mahagathbandan (Grand Alliance) of the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP), Hindustan Awam Morcha (Secular), or HAM-S and Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP). The Congress will contest nine seats, the RJD 20, the RLSP, five, and the two other partners, three each. The alliance has announced candidates for all 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

Bihar goes to the polls in seven phases, with the first being on April 11 and the last on May 19.

The NDA list shows that chief minister Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) has placed its bets on Other Backward Classes (OBCS) and Extremely Backward Classes (EBCS) by extending seven and five tickets to candidates from these groups. The BJP has accommodated upper castes and the LJP has taken care of the scheduled castes to balance the tricky social combination in the state. EBCS and OBCS in Bihar account for nearly 55% of voters while Muslims account for 16%.

To balance the social equation, the JD (U) has had to field two legislators, Girdhari Yadav and Ajay Kumar Mandal. from Banka and Bhagalpur and one minister, Dinesh Chandra Yadav, from Madhepura to take on Sharad Yadav, an erstwhile leader of the JD(U) who has founded the Jan Loktantrik Party, but will contest as an RJD candidate. Kavita Singh, a Rajput legislator, has been picked by the party for contesting Siwan and Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh, a Bhumihar leader and minister, for Munger.

Interestingly, the three NDA partners have fielded only one woman candidate each, which comes to 7.5% of the total number of LS seats in the state.

Giriraj Singh’s cabinet colleagues Radha Mohan Singh, Raj Kumar Singh, Ashwini Kumar Chaubey and Ram Kripal Yadav will contest from their respective seats of Motihari, Ara, Buxar and Patliputra. While the BJP has banked on its old war horses, its list has two new entrants—ashok Kumar Yadav and Gopaljee Thakur— who will be contesting Lok Sabha polls for the first time. Yadav will be replacing his father Hukumdeo Narain Yadav in Madhubani while Thakur will be replacing Kirti Jha Azad in Darbhanga. Azad walked over to the Congress recently.

Late on Saturday, the BJP came up with its sixth list, of 47 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. While there were no big surprises in the sixth list, the party dropped two veterans, Karia Munda from Khunti in Jharkhand, and Shanta Kumar from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. Munda, 82, was a deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha between 2009 and 2014 and Shanta Kumar, 84, is a former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh.

Shanta Kumar was replaced with his protégé and state transport minister Kishan Kapoor and Munda by former Jharkhand chief minister Arjun Munda. A key reason being attributed for the dropping of the veterans is their age.

Already, the BJP has declined tickets to some other seniors such as Bhagat Singh Koshyari, 76, and BC Khandhuri, 84, from Uttarakhand, and Bijoya Chakravarty, 79, from Guwahati. BJP patriarch LK Advani, 91, who represents Gandhinagar in the Lok Sabha, has also been replaced by BJP chief Amit Shah. The fate of Kanpur MP Murli Manohar Joshi, 85, however, has not been decided so far.

The fifth list has candidates for both of Goa’s seats, 15 from Madhya Pradesh, 10 from Jharkhand, 15 from Gujarat, all four from Himachal and two from Karnataka.

Also on Saturday, the BJP changed its candidate in Kairana in Uttar Pradesh, replacing Mriganka Singh with two-term MLA Pradeep Choudhary, Singh, daughter of BJP veteran Hukum Singh, who won from the constituency in 2014, was fielded in last year’s by-election to the seat after the death of her father, but lost to a joint opposition candidate.

In its seventh list of candidates released late on Friday, the Congress changed the constituency alloted to Uttar Pradesh unit chief Raj Babbar from Moradabad to Fatehpur Sikri.

BJP’S youth wing former chief Anurag Thakur has been renominated from Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur. Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar has also been given the party ticket from Madhya Pradesh but has been shifted from Gwalior to Morena.

The latter’s brother, Admiral Nirmal Verma (retd), was the navy chief during 2009-12.

Admiral Singh is a helicopter pilot who has previously served as the navy’s vice chief and deputy chief in a career spanning almost four decades. He will be the first helicopter pilot of the navy to head the service, navy officials said.

Commissioned into the navy in July 1980, Singh has flown Chetak and Kamov helicopters.

An alumnus of the Khadakwasla-based National Defence Academy, Singh is a graduate of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington and the College of Naval Warfare, Mumbai.

Born on November 3, 1959, Singh, whose father, too, was an Indian Air Force officer, hails from Jalandhar in Punjab. He has commanded four warships including guided missile destroyers INS Rana and INS Delhi.

An avid golfer, Singh enjoys swimming, cycling, and running.

While the seniority principle is usually followed when a new service chief is named, there have been instances when the government has overlooked it. When General Bipin Rawat was named army chief in December 2016, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government ignored the seniority principle and superseded two lieutenant generals who were senior to Rawat.

Then-defence minister Manohar Parrikar had then famously said that if seniority was the only criterion then the computer could have selected a service chief on the basis of date of birth and there was no need to follow a rigourous procedure spanning months, analyse Intelligence Bureau reports of candidates or seek the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government also overlooked the seniority principle in 2014 when Admiral Robin Dhowan superseded a senior officer to become the navy chief.

“Admiral Singh may not have been the senior most commander-in-chief, but it is always up to government to select anyone among them,” said military affairs expert Rear Admiral Sudarshan Shrikhande (retd).

“Even in the UK, from where we derive much of our governmental structures and military practices, seniority on a service list has never ever been the criterion except by occasional coincidence.

The same is the case elsewhere in the world,” he said.

He said in India, it can be said that it was a general practice with more than a few exceptions but it cannot be elevated to be either a “principle” or a policy.