Former DGP of Bihar Gupteshwar Pandey did not get a ticket to contest the Bihar Assembly polls, whereas he opted for VRS four months before he was to retire and joined the JD(U).
He was quite set to contest from his hometown Buxar. But, in the outgoing Assembly, the seat held by the congress went to the BJP quota in the seat-sharing arrangement within NDA.
According to sources, for swapping Buxar with any other seat from BJP, JD (U) did not have to press much, as it was done in the case of Jhajha for former minister Damodar Rawat and gave Jamui to BJP. JD (U) also managed to take Paliganj from BJP to accommodate Jayvardhan Yadav, who had crossed over to JD (U) from RJD.
As per sources, the Pandey’s case was neither much pressed by JD (U) nor the BJP looked too keen to oblige him to give him a ticket.
“Unlike another retired DGP (home guards) Sunil Kumar, who got a JD (U) ticket from Bhore, Pandey was perhaps too vocal”, said a source in the NDA. The source further added an observation that Pandey’s over-enthusiasm to become a popular politician too soon could have marred his chance to contest from Buxar.
According to sources, Pandey went “overboard” in the Sushant Singh Rajput case and that could have hurt his chances to get a ticket. A retired IPS officer stated that no Bihar minister or NDA politician spoke as aggressively in favour of the Bihar government as he did and that he was behaving like a politician but it would not have gone too well with the CM. The retired IPS officer recalled how he had cautioned Pandey against taking a VRS in 2009 when he was reportedly eyeing a BJP ticket from Buxar but did not get it.
Pandey dismissed such theories. He stated that it is true that he had taken VRS to contest polls. But the calculations did not work out. He added that he is a loyal soldier of JD (U) and that if JD (U) and BJP want him to campaign in this election, he would do so. The former DGP also defended his stand in the Sushant case stating that he has no regrets about the stand that he took in the case.
