Hectic lobbying on in state Congress for Rajya Sabha berths

Mumbai, Mar 14 (UNI) Hectic lobbying is on in the Maharashtra Congress for filling up two vacancies to the Rajya Sabha from its quota for the March 28 biennial elections.

Other political parties - NCP, Shiv Sena and BJP have already announced their candidates.

NCP has renominated Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Vasant Chavan, BJP has renominated its senior leader Bal Apte and Shiv Sena has fielded former Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi.

Only Mr Joshi has filed his nomination papers so far.

Each winning candidate needs 42 votes from the 289-member Legislative assembly which comprises the electoral college.

Congress has 73 MLAs and Union Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde is likely to be nominated to the Upper House, even though he is yet to receive any directive from the party leadership. The last date for filing of nominations is March 17.

The names of the Congress nominees are likely to be announced a day before the close of nominations.

The race is for the second seat where the names of former MPCC chief Ranjit Deshmukh, former minister Hussain Dalwai, Congress leader from Pune Ulhas Pawar who is a close confidant of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, MPCC president Prabha Rau and former Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Nirupam are being talked about in the party circles. The state unit of Congress is opposed to any move to nominate former Railway Minister C K Jaffer Sharif and outgoing MP Rajeev Shukla, from Maharashtra.

All aspirants are camping in Delhi even as the Budget session of the state legislature which commenced in Mumbai yesterday, broke for two-day Holi holidays.

Even the name of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and industrialist Azim Premji were being discussed by a section of the party as part of a strategy to rope in non-political personalities belonging to Muslim community. But, Khan is not interested, sources said, while veteran actor Dilip Kumar has declined a second term.

Dilip Kumar and R S Gavai are the two Congress nominees out of the total six members who represented the State in the Rajya Sabha.

Apart from the 73 MLAs belonging to the Congress, the party is banking on three CPM MLAs and 11 out of the total 19 Independent MLAs.

The voting, if neccessitated, will be not be through secret ballot.

Every political party has to submit the names of two of its representatives to the returning officer and every voter (MLA) will have to display the ballot paper before casting it in the box. The rule is, however, not binding on Independent legislators.

Congress is not inclined to field a third candidate and so are the other political parties, especially since the voting will not be through secret ballot.

Apart from its 71 MLAs, NCP is banking on four MLAs of Jan Surajya Shakti party, one member of RPI (A) and eight Independents to ensure comfortable victory of its two candidates.

Shiv Sena-BJP alliance has 112 members (58 of Sena and 54 of BJP). It still has 29 additional votes. There are two members from PWP and one each from Swatantra Bharat Paksha, BBM and ABS.

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