From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Suspecting cross voting in Rajasthan and Haryana, the Congress may take its MLAs to safe places and keep them together to prevent any attempts to woo them to vote against the party candidates in the Rajya Sabha elections taking place on June 10 for 57 seats in 15 states.
The Rajasthan MLAs are to be lodged in a hotel in Udaipur while a holiday resort has been booked in Chhattisgarh to shift the Haryana MLAs.
The Congress leaders in Delhi said the party is trying to woo Kuldeep Vishnoi angry at denial of the ticket. They, however, said AICC general secretary and former union minister Ajay Maken fielded from Haryana will sail through with the support of the remaining 30 Congress MLAs in the state. There are three candidates for two seats and the winner has to score at least 31 votes. The BJP’s Krishna Lal Panwar will easily win since the party has a strength of 41 MLAs. If Vishnoi doesn’t vote, independent Kartikey Sharma may prove a challenge to Maken since he has the backing of botht he BJP and its ally JJP.
In Rajasthan, the Congress fears the party MLAs angry at imposition all three outsiders as the candidate may be wooed by Zee TV group owner Subhash Chandra, who had similarly succeeded last time from Haryana by getting votes of a number of Congress MLAs as invalid. The winner here requires 41 votes.
The BJP will have spare 30 votes for Subhash Chandra after getting elected its candidate Ghanshyam Tewari. The third candidate of Congress will lose if Chandra is able to muster other 11 votes. The Congress has 108 MLAs in the Rajasthan Assembly and as such it will be short of 15 votes for election of its third candidate.
In Maharashtra, the BJP has fielded three candidates, putting a challenge to the Shiv Sena of the Maha Vikas Aghadi. Elections are for 6 seats in the state and a candidate needs 42 votes to win. The ruling Aghadi has fielded 4 candidates, including NCP’s general secretary Praful Patel and young UP leader Imran Pratapgarhi of the Congress. The BJP will easily win two seats and Shiv Sena one.
The tussle will be on the sixth seat since Shiv Sena is short of 25 votes since after the re-election of Sanjay Raut. It requires 20 additional votes for the election of Sanjay Pawar, while crucial will be the second preference votes. The BJP needs just 11 votes to get its third candidate elected and its leaders here claimed the party has already arranged support of 11 MLAs, including 10 independents.
In Karnataka, the BJP has 122 MLAs and one gets 45 votes to win. As such, it will easily get elected Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and actor Jaggesh. It will have 32 spare votes for its third candidate Lahar Singh and as such he requires another 13 votes to win. The Congress will be able to let its candidate and former union minister Jairam Ramesh sail through easily as it has 70 MLAs but it has only 25 spare votes for the second candidate and as such the BJP may get through in the second preference votes.
Meanwhile, all five candidates are elected unopposed as their nomination papers were found in order. A formal declaration of their elections will be done on Wednesday after the last date of withdrawal.
Similarly all 11 candidates — 8 from the ruling BJP and three from Samajwadi Party — are to be declared elected unopposed after cancellation of the nomination of independent candidate Mauni Falhari Bapu.
