New Delhi: Ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls on June 10, jostling for nomination to the Upper House of the Parliament has started among Congress leaders. As many as 57 seats of the Upper House of Parliament will have polls on June 10 for which the nominations will close by end of May.
At present, the grand old party has 29 members in the 245- member Rajya Sabha and hopes to get nine seats on its own. The party may get another three seats with some help from its allies. According to party insiders, Congress hopes to get three seats from Rajasthan and two seats from Chhattisgarh. The party is in power in both states.
The Congress hopes to get one seat each in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, where it is the main opposition party and has a sufficient number of MLAs to send its nominees to the Upper House of Parliament. Further, the Congress hopes to get one seat on its own in Maharashtra, where it shares power with Shiv Sena and NCP.
In Tamil Nadu, the DMK has agreed to give one seat from its quota to Congress but the grand old party will have to bargain hard for one seat in Bihar with ally RJD and one seat in Jharkhand with ally JMM. AICC in-charge of Jharkhand Avinash Pande recently met Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren over the issue but there has been no agreement on parting with one seat.
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Sources said since the seats available are limited and there is a long list of leaders who wish to be in the Upper House of Parliament, making a choice is going to be a bit tricky for the high command. Already, jostling among the leaders to get a nomination for the Upper House has begun in the grand old party which looks forward to a mix of youth and experience, especially in the wake of the Udaipur Declaration, wherein the Congress decided to adorn a younger look.
The tenure of many Congress veterans like former Finance Minister P Chidambaram, former Law Minister Kapil Sibal, former environment minister Jairam Ramesh and former I&B minister Ambika Soni are set to end. Sources said that Soni, Chidambaram and Ramesh besides Digvijay Singh are playing crucial roles in the party ahead of the 2024 national polls and are therefore important.
Then there are the G-23 members, notably Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma, who are eyeing a return to the Upper House of Parliament. Veteran Kumari Selja, who recently made way for new Haryana chief Udai Bhan, SC, ST, OBC national coordinator K Raju and former member Pramod Tewari are also Rajya Sabha hopefuls.
Among the younger lot, Rajasthan in-charge Ajay Maken, Assam in-charge Jitendra Singh, Himachal Pradesh in-charge Rajiv Shukla, Meghalaya in-charge Manish Chatrath, communications head Randeep Surjewala and spokespersons Pawan Khera and Gourav Vallabh are also in the queue for a Rajya Sabha nomination.
