Congress President Sonia Gandhi with Rahul Gandhi.
Highlights
- Congress has released the list of candidates who will contest Rajya Sabha elections
- Several Congress leaders are not satisfied over the choice of candidates
- Some leaders said party has announced candidates from states where it received very few votes
Rajya Sabha elections: There is a huge resentment within the Congress on the list of candidates for the forthcoming Rajya Sabha elections to be held on June 10.
Apart from the three Congress leaders including Vivek Tankha (Madhya Pradesh), P Chidambaram (Tamil Nadu) and Jai Ram Ramesh (Karnataka), the remaining candidates have not been given tickets from their home states.
The Congress party has nominated Randeep Singh Surjewala (Haryana), Pramod Tiwari (Uttar Pradesh) and Mukul Wasnik (Maharashtra) all three from Rajasthan. While Rajeev Shukla of Uttar Pradesh and Ranjeet Ranjan of Bihar have been nominated from Chhattisgarh.
The party has nominated Ajay Maken (Delhi) from Haryana and Imran Pratapgarhi, chairman of the minority department from Maharashtra.
Post the candidates' announcement, several big leaders of the party have raised this as a worrying development.
They believe that giving Rajya Sabha tickets to leaders from outside the state in electoral states will send a wrong message.
On the contrary, senior party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Shaktisinh Gohil said that this won't hurt the party.
Speaking to India TV, Gohil said that Arun Jaitley and LK Advani were not from Gujarat but both were Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat. Pranab Mukherjee who was from West Bengal, remained a Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat.
He said that a galaxy of leaders is needed in the House and the same is reflected in the Congress list.
In the list released by the Congress, there are three leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Pramod Tiwari, Imran Pratapgarhi and Rajiv Shukla, who originally come from Uttar Pradesh, but have been given tickets from different states.
Leaders who consider the selection of candidates is wrong also believe that fielding three candidates from a state where party's performance in the elections was poor is disappointing.
It's worth mentioning that in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections 2022, Congress received only 2.3 per cent vote share while 97 per cent of the candidates could not even save their deposits.
In fact, in ticket distribution, preference has been given to the leaders who are close to the Gandhi family.
Randeep Singh Surjewala, Ajay Maken and Ranjeet Ranjan are considered close to Rahul Gandhi, while Imran Pratapgarhi, Rajiv Shukla and Pramod Tiwari are considered close to Priyanka Gandhi.
It is known that Mukul Wasnik, P Chidambaram, Vivek Tankha, Jai Ram Ramesh are considered to be the likes of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
It is noteworthy that the party didn't send two big leaders of G-23 including Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma to the house of elders, although if sources are to be believed, Ghulam Nabi Azad was offered a seat on behalf of the Congress President but he refused to take it.
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