Bhopal, June 9 (IANS) The Congress on Tuesday flew its Madhya Pradesh legislators to Bengaluru amid fears of cross-voting in the upcoming Rajya Sabha election, after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s decision to field a third candidate turned a seemingly straightforward contest into a high-stakes political battle.
A group of Congress MLAs departed from Bhopal’s Raja Bhoj Airport for Bengaluru, while another batch was scheduled to leave later in the evening. Sources told IANS that around 45-50 legislators, some accompanied by family members, travelled in the first chartered flight arranged by the party.
The move comes a day after Congress candidate Meenakshi Natarajan and BJP nominee Mahesh Kevat filed their nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha election. While the BJP had already fielded Rajneesh Agarwal and Tarun Chugh for two of the three vacancies from Madhya Pradesh, its decision to nominate Kevat as a third candidate has significantly altered the political equations.
The arithmetic of the 230-member Madhya Pradesh Assembly explains the anxiety in the Congress camp. The BJP currently holds 165 seats in the Assembly. Since a Rajya Sabha candidate requires 58 first-preference votes for victory, the ruling party needs 116 votes to comfortably elect its first two candidates. Even after securing those two seats, the BJP still has a surplus of 49 votes. It is on the strength of these surplus votes that the BJP has entered the contest for the third seat by fielding Kevat.
However, the party still falls short of the required number and would need the support of around 10 to 12 Congress MLAs or other legislators to ensure the victory of its third candidate.
The Congress, meanwhile, has 62 MLAs in the Assembly. The number is sufficient to elect its nominee, Meenakshi Natarajan, as she requires 58 votes to win. However, the party’s margin is extremely narrow, with only four surplus votes. This means that even a limited instance of cross-voting could upset the Congress calculations.
If 10 to 12 Congress legislators were to vote in favour of the BJP’s third candidate, Natarajan’s path to victory could become difficult, potentially allowing the BJP to pull off an upset and capture all three Rajya Sabha seats from the state.
It is this possibility that has prompted the Congress leadership to move its legislators to Karnataka, where the party is in power, and keep them together until voting day.
Before leaving for Bengaluru, the MLAs assembled at the residence of Leader of the Opposition Umang Singhar. Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh also visited the airport and interacted with party legislators.
Defending the decision, Singhar said the Congress had complete faith in its MLAs but could not ignore what he described as the BJP’s attempts to engineer defections and cross-voting.
“It is natural for us to take our MLAs to a Congress-ruled state. We have full faith in all 62 legislators, but we must remain vigilant against the BJP’s politics of poaching and subversion. The BJP should focus on keeping its own MLAs united,” he said.
–IANS
pd/dan