Cong and BJP announce candidates for RS polls

New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday declared 12 candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, including party general secretary K C Venugopal, Deepender Hooda and senior Supreme Court advocate K T S Tulsi.

The Congress named Digvijaya Singh and Phool Singh Baraiya as candidates from Madhya Pradesh where a keen contest would take place in one out of three seats as the BJP has also announced two candidates -- Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sumer Singh Solanki.

The Congress and the BJP, given their respective strength in the Assembly, can ensure easy win for one candidate each, while a contest is on cards on the third seat.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi first approved the candidature of nine candidates for the March 26 Rajya Sabha polls, a party statement said.

Apart from Singh and Baraiya from Madhya Pradesh, the Congress named Tulsi and Phulo Devi Netam from Chhattisgarh, Shahzada Anwar from Jharkhand, Rajiv Satav from Maharashtra, Venugopal and Neeraj Dangi from Rajasthan and Kennedy Cornelius Khyriem from Meghalaya.

Later, the party issued another list of three more candidates -- Hooda from Haryana, and Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki from Gujarat.

The party has opted for a young face in Deepender Hooda, the son of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, instead of senior leader and former Union minister Kumari Selja from the state.

Earlier in the day, when asked about the Rajya Sabha nominations, Congress's chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said it was up to the Congress president to decide who will go to the Upper House and who will not.

"Personally I am not a contender for any post...I believe that there are many people who want to go to Rajya Sabha, but the party is like a mother and the party is bigger than the post," he told reporters.

He said everyone should accept the decision of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and serve the party.

The BJP also on Thursday announced names of five more candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls. The party fielded backward community leader Ramchandra Jangra and its vice president Dushyant Kumar Gautam, a Dalit, from Haryana, Indu Goswami from Himachal Pradesh, Bhagwat Karad from Maharashtra and Sumer Singh Solanki from Madhya Pradesh.

The party had on Wednesday named its nine candidates for the polls.

The RJD on Thursday announced its candidates for two Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar that it seeks to wrest from the NDA, in a surprise move that caught off-guard the Congress, its alliance partner.

The RJD fielded Prem Chandra Gupta, a sitting Rajya Sabha MP and close aide of party president Lalu Prasad, and a political greenhorn Amarendra Dhari Singh.

They filed their nominations immediately after their names were announced here by RJD state president Jagadanand Singh, who also scoffed at a recent "open letter" written by AICC in-charge of Bihar Shaktisinh Gohil, reminding Tejashwi Yadav of the "promise" of giving it one seat.

According to Bihar Assembly secretary and returning officer Bateshwar Nath Pandey, both Prem Chand Gupta and Amarendra Dhari Singh have, so far, been the only candidates to have filed their nominations for the elections for the five RS seats.

While matching up with the pace, The ruling TRS in Telangana announced incumbent K Keshava Rao and senior leader K R Suresh Reddy as its nominees in the biennial election to fill two vacancies in Rajya Sabha from the state.

TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao finalised the candidatures of Keshava Rao and Suresh Reddy and they will submit their nominations on Friday, TRS sources said. Talks are still going on between the three ruling allies in Maharashtra -- Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress -- to decide a fourth candidate of the alliance for the Rajya Sabha elections. According to sources, Congress is demanding an additional Rajya Sabha seat.

The last date for filing nominations is March 13, but so far only NCP chief Sharad Pawar has filed nomination from the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi's

side.