New Delhi: The Congress Sunday announced the names of 10 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, with the list comprising mostly of old faces and those considered to be Gandhi family loyalists. Meanwhile, many G-23 group leaders, who were up for re-nomination, have been given a miss.
They include Anand Sharma and Ghulam Nabi Azad, both of whom were looking to get tickets, Congress sources said.
The candidates for the polls, scheduled to take place on 10 June, only had Vivek Tankha and Mukul Wasnik ( who is currently a Congress general secretary) from the rebel faction.
Other veteran leaders who have been accommodated are Rajeev Shukla, Ajay Maken, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala, Pramod Tiwari and P. Chidambaram.
The surprise nominations were that of Congress minority department chief and youth leader Imran Pratapgarhi and AICC Secretary and Bihar leader Ranjeet Ranjan, who is also a former MP and wife of Bihar politician Pappu Yadav.
Notably, the party also did not announce a candidate from Jharkhand, despite Chief Minister and JMM chief Hemant Soren meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Saturday night. The JMM and Congress form the ruling coalition in the state.
“There will be one candidate on behalf of the coalition in the state,” Soren had said in Delhi after the meeting, adding the announcement would be made in Jharkhand.
Following the announcement, there were also public signs of disgruntlement within the party.
“Maybe there was some shortfall in my tapasya“, Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera wrote in a cryptic tweet, shortly after the list came out.
The post was then quote-tweeted by actor Nagma, presently general secretary of Mahila Congress, who lamented that even her “efforts of 21 years” have “fallen short in front of Imran (Pratapgarhi) Bhai”.
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Several old faces
Among the list of familiar faces, eight of them will be contesting the polls from states they don’t originally belong to.
Shukla, a domicile of UP, and Ranjeet Ranjan, a domicile of Bihar, have been nominated from Chhattisgarh. Shukla is the party in charge of Himachal Pradesh, which is going to the polls at the end of this year.
ThePrint has learnt that Ranjan’s nomination from Chhattisgarh was, however, opposed by Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who was insistent on a “Brahmin+local” formula for his two seats.
Jairam Ramesh has been nominated from Karnataka, while Ajay Maken earned his nomination from Haryana.
Imran Pratapgarhi, a 34-year-old poet from UP is the youngest candidate on the list and will be contesting from Maharashtra. His name as the party’s young, minority representative to replace Ghulam Nabi Azad has left many surprised, sources said.
Randeep Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari are running from Rajasthan.
Two candidates have been nominated from their home states — Chidambaram from Tamil Nadu and Vivek Tankha from Madhya Pradesh.
A ‘dicey’ Rajasthan seat
While the party has nominated three names for three seats from Rajasthan, it has the numerical strength to win only two. The outcome of the third seat would depend on how thirteen independent MLAs in the state vote.
All three candidates are said to have different dynamics with the party leadership and the Gandhi family, leaving the seat distribution unknown for now (can we say this?).
Randeep Surjewala, the party’s present general-secretary in-charge of communications, is a bonafide Gandhi family loyalist. On the other hand, Pramod Tiwari from Uttar Pradesh, an old hand in Congress’ existing set of veteran leaders, is said to have a sound relationship with leaders across party lines. Mukul Wasnik — a signatory to the G-23 and now as the general secretary in-charge of the party’s Central Election Commission (CEC) — had the unique distinction of signing off on his own nomination circular.
Tussle in Jharkhand
The party is yet to completely get rid of the nomination process hassle, with a seat in Jharkhand remaining to be decided.
ThePrint has learnt that while there was an agreement on JMM backing a Congress candidate at Soren’s meeting with Sonia, the JMM leader faced resistance to the decision from his party colleagues after his return to Ranchi.
“A final word is only expected on Monday. At the meeting with the Congress president, Soren had agreed to back a Congress candidate but had a few ideas on who the party should or should not nominate. Upon his return to Ranchi, he has assured members of the leadership that he’s handling affairs in his party and that he has time to handle it even after the Congress fields a candidate,” said a party source privy to the developments.
The Congress, however, is not keen on fielding a candidate without a final assurance from the JMM, the source said.
(Edited by Monami Gogoi)
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