The three official candidates of the ruling Congress party – Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh (both former Union Ministers) and retired IPS officer K C Ramamurthy as well as JD (S) candidate B M Farooq, Mangalore-based businessman, filed their nomination papers for the ensuing biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha from the Karnataka Assembly on Monday. The elections are slated for June 11.
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Besides ministers, the party has also chosen senior party functionaries such as party national vice-president Om Prakash Mathur for the Upper House. Six of these seats are in Maharashtra with two each held by Congress and NCP, and one each by BJP and Sena. Piyush Goyal is the only candidate who had filed his papers long before the list was out as he had to be on a personal visit to the US. It is expected to win 18-19 seat due to its sizeable strength in states like Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Haryana.
Naqvi, minister of state for parliamentary affairs, has been nominated from Jharkhand.
The BJP today picked noted journalist and party spokesperson M J Akbar as its nominee to fill the second vacant seat for the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh .
However, party sources said this “insider-outsider” factor might not have prompted the BJP to change its decision because even Nirmala is not from Karnataka.
Birender Singh was accompanied by his MLA-wife Prem Lata, Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and cabinet ministers Ram Bilas Sharma and O P Dhankar during the filing of nomination.
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Union Minister of State Y.S. Chowdary and industrialist and former Congress minister T.G. Venkatesh are the other two candidates finalised for the Rajya Sabha slots from the state.
