BHOPAL: Pressure mounts on the BJP leadership to field a third candidate in the June 18 Rajya Sabha polls in Madhya Pradesh to deny Congress to retain its seat.
Two BJP members in the Rajya Sabha, Union minister George Kurien and Sumer Singh Solanki, one Congress RS member, former chief minister Digvijay Singh, are retiring on June 21, necessitating the biennial polls to three seats in MP.
Two senior BJP leaders, state urban development minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and former minister Bhupendra Singh, a sitting MLA, have sounded optimistic that the party could win the third seat if it fields a third candidate in the polls.
Their optimism stems from the fact that the party will have 49 surplus votes after ensuring victory of its two candidates and it will hardly need additional nine votes to win the third seat also.
Besides, a section of BJP leaders sees the alleged infighting in the Congress over nomination of AICC general secretary in-charge of Telangana Meenakshi Natarajan for the RS seat as an opportunity to snatch away the third seat from Congress by engineering cross voting.
With a strength of 165 MLAs in the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly, BJP is all set to send its two candidates to the RS comfortably while Congress with a strength of 65 MLAs is in a position to send its lone candidate to the Upper House.
As per the electoral college for the June 18 RS polls in Madhya Pradesh, each candidate has to garner 58 votes to go to the RS.
Hence, BJP needs 116 votes to ensure victory of its two candidates, leaving 49 surplus votes.
The rift in the Congress in Madhya Pradesh over Ms. Natarajan’s nomination by the party has come to the fore when former party MLA Naresh Gyanchandani wrote a letter to the high command calling her candidature as a ‘wrong’ choice.
He also questioned her ability to keep the flock in the CLP together in the event of BJP fielding a third candidate and trying to win the third seat through cross voting.
BJP sources however said that there is a remote chance of the party either fielding a third candidate or supporting an independent to force an election in the June 18 biennial polls in the state to win the third seat.
“The party has already announced the names of two candidates indicating that it will not field the third candidate in the polls”, a senior BJP functionary said.
More importantly, BJP would not like to accommodate nine- ten Congress MLAs, who will be tapped for cross voting, since the party is still struggling to contain resentment among its local workers and leaders after induction of over around four dozen workers and leaders of Congress to dislodge the Kamal Nath government in March 2020, the BJP leader said.
“Nothing is ruled out in politics. We are still sitting with our fingers crossed.”, a Congress leader said.
Two BJP candidates, Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Agrawal filed nomination for the ensuing RS polls on Saturday.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
