New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha polls to elect the members of the Upper House on 16 seats spread across four states are set to take place on Friday (June 10). The prominent candidates contesting polls today include Piyush Goyal, Sanjay Raut, and Praful Patel in Maharashtra; Ajay Maken in Haryana; Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Surjewala in Rajasthan, and Nirmala Sitharaman and Jairam Ramesh in Karnataka. The elections will take place today amid speculations of horse-trading and fears of cross-voting. The RS polls will be crucial in view of the Presidential elections due in July.
Polling is set to begin at 9 am and will conclude at 4 pm. Notably, all 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
However, polling for the 16 seats across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana, and Karnataka will be held today as the number of candidates exceeds the seats. As previously mentioned, the prominent leaders, whose fates will be decided at 5 pm when the counting of the votes takes place, include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala, and Mukul Wasnik.
Notably, the Congress party faced discontent after the announcement of nominees for the Upper House.
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Maharashtra
The Congress party has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi for the RS polls while Praful Patel has been fielded from the NCP. Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar have been given a run in the polls. According to news agency ANI, the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance has shifted all its MLAs to a hotel in Mumbai fearing horse-trading. The alliance is expressing confidence in bagging all the six seats from the state. The BJP has fielded Dr Anil Bonde, Piyush Goyal, and Dhananjay Mahadik from the state. Interestingly, there will be seven candidates in the fray for the six seats in the state.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had convened a meeting of the MLAs in the state and exuded confidence in all the four candidates of the Maha Vikas Aghadi of winning the Rajya Sabha polls.
The AIMIM’s Maharashtra president Imtiaz Jaleel informed that the Asaduddin Owaisi led-party has decided to vote for Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in the Rajya Sabha elections in Maharashtra to defeat the BJP. “Our 2 AIMIM Maharashtra MLAs have been asked to vote for the Congress candidate Imran Pratapgarhi,” he mentioned in a tweet.
Haryana
Coming upward to the Northern state, polling will take place for two seats. Both the BJP alliance and Congress legislators were shifted to resorts to tackle the possibilities of poaching. While the BJP-JJP alliance has lodged their MLAs in a resort in Chandigarh, the Congress leaders were moved to a resort in the city. The Congress party has nominated senior leader Ajay Maken while the BJP has fielded former minister Krishan Lal Panwar. It is noteworthy that a senior leader of the state, Kuldeep Bishnoi is already upset with the party’s recent decisions. Besides this, another problem for the party has come in the form of the candidature of Kartikey Sharma whose father and father-in-law are former Congress leaders and are known to have influence in the state politics.
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Rajasthan
Congress leaders Mukul Wasnik and Randeep Surjewala are facing the RS polls in Rajasthan. The resort politics took the driving seat here as well with the Congress MLAs being tossed between Udaipur and Jaipur. MLAs were lodged at the Leela Palace Hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur on the penultimate day of Rajya Sabha voting, ANI reported. Meanwhile, the Rajasthan government on Thursday ordered the suspension of internet services in the Amer area of Jaipur district for 12 hours till 9 am on Friday where Congress MLAs are staying after they returned from Udaipur.
Karnataka
In Karnataka, JD(S) has fielded entrepreneur and social worker Kupendra Reddy as its first candidate in the Rajya Sabha election. The Congress had fielded Mansoor Ali Khan as its second candidate to corner the JD(S) and its bid to send Kupendra Reddy to the Rajya Sabha. Six candidates are in the fray for the Rajya Sabha poll to four seats for the June 10 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka.
A day ahead of the polling, former state chief minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy on Thursday urged the Congress to give its second preferential votes to JDS, if it really wanted to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party. “After the filing of nominations by all parties, I am consistently requesting congress friends, if their intention is to defeat BJP, then you please sit and discuss,” Kumaraswamy told ANI.
Amid allegations of attempts at horse-trading, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Thursday said that special observers have been appointed to oversee the poll process which will also be videographed.
The maximum Rajya Sabha seats are located in Uttar Pradesh (11), followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu with six seats each.
(With Agency Inputs)