Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
With just four days left before the nomination deadline, the Congress on Thursday announced seven candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections across five states.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge will seek re-election from Karnataka, while the party has also fielded its national media department chairman Pawan Khera and senior leader Mansoor Ali Khan from the state. Both Khera and Khan are looking to make their Rajya Sabha debut.
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Given the Congress’s comfortable numbers in the Karnataka Assembly, all three candidates are expected to be elected when polling is held on June 18.
In Madhya Pradesh, the party has nominated Meenakshi Natarajan, a close aide of Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, for the Rajya Sabha. When elected, it will mark her return to Parliament more than a decade after she lost the Mandsaur Lok Sabha seat to the BJP in 2014.
In Rajasthan, sitting Rajya Sabha MP Neeraj Dangi has been nominated for a second term. In Jharkhand, where two Rajya Sabha seats are due to fall vacant, the Congress has fielded Pranav Jha.
The most notable development, however, has come from Tamil Nadu, where the party has nominated Praveen Chakravarty, chairman of its Data Analytics Department, for the Rajya Sabha bypoll.
The by-election was necessitated by the resignation of AIADMK MP CV Shanmugham after he was elected to the Tamil Nadu Assembly. Although the ruling TVK has the numbers to secure what would have been its first Rajya Sabha seat, the party opted to back the Congress candidate instead.
The Congress currently has just five MLAs in the Tamil Nadu Assembly and is a junior partner in the coalition government led by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay.
On June 18, voting will take place for 27 Rajya Sabha seats — three of which are bypolls — across 13 states: Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Maharashtra, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.
While the Congress is expected to win seven seats across five states comfortably, the BJP is expected to make bigger gains in the upcoming polls. With several key Bills likely to be tabled in the Monsoon Session, the changing arithmetic in the Upper House will be crucial in shaping legislative outcomes.
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SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
