Tough contest likely for the third seat

Bhopal, Mar 14: Tough contest for the third seat of Rajya Sabha is likely in Madhya Pradesh, while the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is confident of winning two seats. The party needs only three MLAs to win the third seat, but other political parties coming together with main opposition Congress in favour of independent candidate Vivek Tankha has created state of confusion.

The party postponed filing nominations for the Rajya Sabha twice in past two days as it has not been able to decide the nominee for the third seat where a show of strength will take place. The party candidates will now file their nominations Saturday, the last day for filing nominations. Independent candidate Tankha filed nomination papers in presence of State Congress president Suresh Pachauri on Friday. At present there are 227 legislators in the house of 230. This way, each candidate needs 57 MLAs’ votes for winning. The ruling BJP has 166 MLAs in the house and thus it needs only five more MLAs. Similarly, independent candidate Vivek Tankha needs 57 MLAs. He is getting support from 41 Congress legislators while other political parties’ 20 MLAs are still undecided.

All the parties including Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal (U), Rashtriya Samanata Dal (RSD), Bahujan Samaj Party and others claim that they would go by the decision taken by their high command in New Delhi. Thus the situation was not clear till late night. It is claimed that during the meeting of BJP Central Election Committee in New Delhi, Maya Singh and Raghunandan Sharma were on first and second place, while Prabhat Jha was on the third position. On the other hand, party sources claimed that in past two days, Prabhat Jha has replaced Raghunandan Sharma. However, the stand of the BJP was not clear till the filing of the report.

The Rajya Sabha members from these seats presently are Suresh Pachauri of the Congress, BJP's Maya Singh and Samajwadi Party leader Obaidullah Azmi. Though BJP has finalized three names - Rajya Sabha member Maya Singh, national secretary Prabhat Jha and Raghunandan Sharma who has recently returned to the party fold from Uma Bharati's Bharatiya Jan Shakti (BJS) Party - it is unable to take a final decision on the priority to be accorded to the nominees. Three MLAs from Samajwadi Party are learnt to have supported BJP and this way, the BJP would need only two more MLAs, probably from Gondwana Gantantra Party (GGP) of any other party.