RS Polls: Sonia files nomination in Jaipur; BJP fields party chief Nadda, Ashok Chavan, Vaishnaw

New Delhi: Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday filed her nomination papers from Rajasthan for Rajya Sabha polls while the BJP renominated its chief J P Nadda and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan, besides fielding new-entrant in the party and ex-chief minister Ashok Chavan.

Ahead of the Thursday deadline for nominations, the BJP and the Congress have named 28 and 10 candidates respectively for the seats they are expected to win going by their current strength in state assemblies.

Among the 10 candidates announced by the Congress on Wednesday were party treasurer Ajay Maken, who has been fielded from Karnataka, noted advocate Abhishek Singhvi from the lone seat in Himachal Pradesh and Renuka Chowdhury from Telangana.

Sonia Gandhi was accompanied by her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra besides former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and other Congress leaders when she filed her nomination papers in Jaipur.

The 77-year-old Congress leader is set to enter the Upper House for the first time from Rajasthan. Gandhi will fill the seat that will fall vacant in April after former prime minister Manmohan Singh completes his Rajya Sabha tenure.

The BJP claimed Gandhi's decision to opt for the Rajya Sabha was an admission of a “looming defeat” of the Congress and said after the "crushing defeat" in Amethi, Rae Bareli, which she represented in Lok Sabha, "was next".

From Maharashtra, the BJP named former chief minister Ashok Chavan, a day after he switched to the BJP from the Congress, while former Union minister Praful Patel was nominated by Ajit Pawar-led NCP.

"I cannot describe my feelings in words. The BJP has reposed trust in me even though I joined the party yesterday. This is a huge responsibility," Chavan told reporters.

Many senior BJP leaders and outgoing Rajya Sabha MPs, including seven Union ministers such as Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupender Yadav, have not been renominated by the party for the biennial Rajya Sabha polls amid strong indications that several of them may contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP repeated Union ministers Vaishnaw and Murugan as Rajya Sabha candidates from Odisha and Madhya Pradesh respectively. Among the 28 outgoing MPs, the BJP has renominated only four - Nadda, the two Union ministers and national spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi.

Vaishnaw was elected in 2019 to the Upper House of Parliament with the backing of the BJD and the ruling party in Odisha on Wednesday again extended support to him.

Trivedi and former Union minister R P N Singh were among seven BJP candidates who filed their nomination papers on Wednesday in Lucknow in the presence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, state party general secretary Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant, former MLA Sadhna Singh and former Agra mayor Naveen Jain were the others.

The election to the 56 Rajya Sabha seats is scheduled to be held on February 27, and the last date for filing nominations is February 15.

Nadda is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Himachal Pradesh but after the Congress' win in the Assembly polls, the party cannot win the seat there.

Former Union minister Maken had unsuccessfully contested the Rajya Sabha election from Haryana last year but he has now been fielded from Congress-ruled Karnataka.

Singhvi will file his nomination for the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Himachal Pradesh on Thursday.

Senior party leader and former Union minister Anand Sharma was seeking a Rajya Sabha berth from Himachal, which is his home state.

Former Union minister Renuka Chowdhury will return to Rajya Sabha from Telangana after a gap. Chowdhury (69) has been a member of the Lok Sabha for two terms as well as the Rajya Sabha for three terms.

She was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1999 and 2004 from Khammam constituency in Telangana. She was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1986 to 1998 and again from April 2012 to April 2018. She was also a minister in the UPA-1 government.

M Anil Kumar Yadav has also been fielded from the southern state where the party came into power in December The Congress also renominated Syed Naseer Hussain, who is a coordinator in the office of Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge. This will be Hussain's second term as a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka.

The party has also renominated its Bihar unit chief Akhilesh Prasad Singh from the state.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal announced that Manoj Kumar Jha and Sanjay Yadav will be the party's candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections in Bihar.

From Madhya Pradesh, apart from Murugan, the BJP has fielded Dalit seer Umesh Nath Maharaj, backward-class woman leader Maya Naroliya and farmer leader Banshilal Gurjar.

The Congress nominated its state party unit treasurer Ashok Singh who filed his nomination papers in Patna.

JD(U)'s Sanjay Kumar Jha and BJP's Bhim Singh and Dharamsheela Gupta filed their papers in the presence of top NDA leaders from the state including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary.

Congress leader from Karnataka G C Chandrasekhar has been renominated by the party in the list announced on Wednesday.

The Congress announced the candidature of former Mumbai mayor Chandrakant Handore from Maharashtra. A Dalit leader from Mumbai, Handore had lost the legislative council polls in 2022.

Six seats from Maharashtra are up for grabs.

"It seems the Rajya Sabha election would be unopposed one," state BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule told reporters on Wednesday.

Apart from Handore, the other candidates are Praful Patel, BJP's Chavan, ex-MLA Medha Kulkarni and RSS worker Ajit Gopchade, and Shiv Sena's Milind Deora.

BJP's Devendra Pratap Singh filed nomination papers for the only Rajya Sabha seat from Chhattisgarh.

In Gujarat, the BJP dropped Union ministers Parshottam Rupala and Mansukh Mandaviya who had won the 2018 election from the state and are likely to be fielded for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Besides Nadda, the party has named its leaders Jashvantsinh Parmar and Mayank Nayak and diamond baron Govind Dholakia.

With a record 156 MLAs in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly belonging to the BJP, the ruling party is set to sweep all four seats unlike in 2018 when Congress sent two of the four candidates – Amee Yagnik and Naran Rathwa – to the Rajya Sabha.

Parmar had contested the 2017 Assembly elections from Godhra as an independent and was defeated. He later joined the BJP.

Nayak is an OBC (Other Backward Caste) leader and currently serving as the president of the party’s OBC morcha. Known to be a dedicated party worker, he had also served as a BJP in-charge for Patan district.

Dholakia is the founder and chairman of Shree Ramkrishna Exports Private Limited, a Surat-based diamond manufacturing and exporting company based in Surat. He is known for his humanitarian activities.

Most of the BJP nominees are low profile and with their selection the party has emphasised that it recognises its grassroots organisation workers who might not be much known in outside political circles, while factoring in social equations as well.