Severe competition in Congress for Rajya Sabha seats

Last week, the State unit had passed a unanimous resolution authorising AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge to finalise the candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections.

Hyderabad: With the Rajya Sabha elections to be held on February 27, aspirants in the Telangana unit of the Congress are keeping their fingers crossed over their prospects to contest the elections.

Last week, the State unit had passed a unanimous resolution authorising AICC chief Mallikarjun Kharge to finalise the candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections. However, there is severe competition among the leaders from the State unit.

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This apart, the party high command is also expected to field a candidate to contest the elections from Telangana.

Among those aspiring from the State unit include former union Minister Balram Naik, former union Minister Renuka Chowdhary, former Ministers G Chinna Reddy, K Jana Reddy and J Geetha Reddy.

During the Assembly elections, Chinna Reddy had sacrificed his ticket to Megha Reddy to contest from Wanaparthy as per the party’s choice. Former Home Minister K Jana Reddy had also evinced to contest Parliament elections while his son K Jayaveer Reddy had contested from the Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly constituency.

Similarly, the party high command is also learnt to be exploring candidatures of AICC publicity chairman Pawan Khera, AICC National spokesperson and former journalist Supriya Shrinate, MP Jairam Ramesh, AICC NSUI incharge Kanhaiya Kumar and AICC Telangana incharge Deepa Das Munshi from the State.

The terms of BRS MPs J Santosh Kumar, Badugula Lingaiah Yadav and Vaddiraju Ravichandra, who were all elected in 2018, come to end this year.

There are 119 MLAs in the Telangana Assembly and three seats of Rajya Sabha are going to fall vacant. The Congress currently has 64 MLAs in the Assembly and it can win two seats as 31 votes would be required for electing a Rajya Sabha Member.

The BRS, which has 39 MLAs, can win the third seat. In this context, if the Congress fields two candidates and the BRS fields one candidate, then the election of the three candidates to Rajya Sabha would be unanimous.

But in case if the Congress plans to field three candidates, then there would be voting with first, second and third preference votes. eom