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Rajya Sabha elections : Congress may lose five seats |
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The Congress faces the prospect of its strength in the Rajya Sabha coming down marginally after the biennial elections to the Upper House to be held on March 28. Because of depleted strength in some of the state assemblies, its strength may go down by five. Of the 18 Congress members retiring, the party will be able to win back only 13 seats, losing five seats to the BJP and allies because of its losses in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. UPA constituents like the RJD, which has four outgoing members, stand to lose a couple of seats.
The Congress has fielded Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde from Maharashtra and re-nominated its three retiring Union Ministers - Arjun Singh (Madhya Pradesh), H.R. Bhardwaj (Haryana) and Dasari Narayan Rao (Andhra Pradesh) - and Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K. Rahman Khan (Karnataka).
While choosing candidates across nine states, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi came up with a few surprises. She had handpicked AICC spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi for the party’s lone seat from Rajasthan, his home state. In Uttaranchal, the Congress ignored Chief Minister N.D. Tiwari’s open hints for a place at the Centre, opting instead for Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who hails from MP and is presently in charge of the AICC’s department of and training. AICC spokesman Rajiv Shukla has secured nomination for the second seat the Congress hopes to win in Maharashtra. But he would need about a dozen extra votes to romp home.
While Praveen Rashtrapal will represent Gujarat, the largest contingent of Congress entrants to the RS is from Andhra Pradesh. Besides Rao, the list has Rashid Alvi. To placate the state unit, which may resent the Muslim leader’s renomination, the party has also given a berth each to PCC chief K. Keshav Rao and INTUC chief G. Sanjeeva Reddy.
Like Tiwari, the Andhra and Himachal Chief Ministers have been shown their place. The party spiked Y.S.R. Reddy’s move to send confidante Ramachandra Rao to the RS and rejected Virbhadra Singh’s efforts to earmark the Himachal seat for Nattha Singh. Instead, it gave the ticket to Himachal PCC chief Viplav Thakur, a woman. There are two other women in the list. While Mabel Rabello, a Christian leader, who had shifted from MP to Chhattisgarh is a nominee from Jharkhand, Sushila Tirta, a tribal has been fielded from Orissa. The Congress has managed to strike a social balance of upper castes (who dominate the list), tribals, minorities and SCs.
After the end of filing of nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha elections, it became apparent that there would be unopposed elections in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal where the number of candidates in the fray remained equal to the vacancies arising in the House. A formal announcement is expected to be made after the last day of withdrawals on Monday, March 20.
But interesting contests are on the cards in Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Elections to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka took an interesting turn when Jnanpeeth awardee U.R. Ananthamurthy joined the fray. His entry will alter the calculations of industrialist Rajiv Chandrashekar, who has filed his nomination as an Independent, banking on the support of the ruling combine, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Four vacancies arose from the state.
Ananthamurthy and Chandrashekar would have to strive to get 45 votes. The BJP has 34 surplus votes while the JD(S) has 14. The Congress has 19 surplus votes.
Bihar is the second state heading for a contest. As against six vacancies, there are seven party-backed candidates. The ruling combine of Janata Dal (United) and BJP are confident of bagging four seats. The JD(U) has fielded pharmaceutical industry giant, “King” Mahendra Prasad, who now represents the Rashtriya Janata Dal. The BJP has fielded former Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The opposition RJD which has 54 votes as against the required 35, has fielded Jabir Hussain. But its decision to pitch a second candidate, Rajniti Prasad, is being seen as a gamble to upset Lok Janshakti Party’s Ranjan Yadav, once considered close to Lalu Prasad.
In Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party has sought to corner party rebels by putting up three candidates for the Rajya Sabha. The BSP strength in the Assembly is 67, but after five legislators from the rebel group returned to the BSP, the party’s actual strength is 72.
To get elected to the Rajya Sabha, a candidate will need around 38 votes which means that the BSP, on its present strength, can win only two seats, but if 37 rebel MLAs also vote for it, the third candidate will make it to the Upper House. The BSP leaders claim that this is a part of their strategy to corner the rebels in court.
“If they defy the whip, they will do so at the risk of being disqualified because the split and the merger of the breakaway group have already been set aside by the Allahabad High court. Moreover, the Supreme Court has not given any direction on the petition filed by the rebels, explained a senior BSP leader.
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