From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Congress went by the guiding principles of accommodating the office-bearers and those holding the key positions in the party in the selection of its Rajya Sabha candidates for the biennial elections on June 10.
Former Rajya Sabha opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha did not figure in the first list of 10 candidates announced Sunday, but they have not lost all since the Congress is counting on winning 12 seats that may see accommodation to both in the last minute on May 31 on the last day of nominations.
Azad may be fielded from Jharkhand as Chief Minister Hemant Soren has agreed, after a meeting with Sonia Gandhi, to let the Congress take one seat instead of fielding his own Jharkhand Mukti Morcha candidate. Azad will be thus a joint candidate of the ruling JMM and Congress. A similar assurance has been given to Anand Sharma to go back to the Rajya Sabha against the seat he is vacating from Himachal Pradesh.
Both Azad and Anand Sharma are in the most important 8-member political affairs group headed by Rahul Gandhi and as such they cannot be ignored, a top party source said. They said their names may be declared either on Tuesday or till the last date of withdrawal on June 3 as one of the selected candidates may opt out.
Azad and Anand are seen as the leaders of the Group of 23 that wrote a strong-worded letter to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 for the organisational shake-up. But for that matter, those already given ticket from the G-23 group include Mukul Wasnik and Vivek Tankha.
Even Rajeev Shukla, Ranjeet Ranjan and Vivek Tankha figuring in the list of candidates are all AICC office-bearers. The first two have been given ticket to Chhattisgarh while Senior advocate Tankha has been repeated from Madhya Pradesh.
Both Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan have the assembly elections next year and so expectations were that the preference will be the local candidates. There is much resentment in Rajasthan since all three candidates chosen are from other states — Randeep Singh Surjewala from Haryana, Mukul Wasnik from Maharashtra (Vidarbha) and Pramod Tewari from Uttar Pradesh. Resentment was obvious sinc last time also the party had sent AICC general secretary K C Venugopal of Kerala from the state. Mukul Wasnik, AICC general secretary, is part of the high command for almost three decades. This will be his fifth term.
The general reaction in the party is that the selection of the candidates is against the spirit of the Udaipur Chintan Shivir where the stress was on one man, one post, and hence those already in key positions should not have been rewarded with the Rajya Sabha ticket.