Congress to decide RS nominees today, Rahul Gandhi to virtually join meeting

Congress is likely to finalise nominees for the Rajya Sabha biennial elections in its meeting today with the former party chief Rahul Gandhi whos in London linking through video conference while a number of veterans are vying to reenter the Upper HouseCongress is expected to win eight Rajya Sabha seats largely from Rajasthan and Chattishgarh The party veterans P Chidambaram Ghulam Nabi Azad Anand Sharma Vivek Tankha Ajay Maken Rajeev Shukla Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari are stated to be in the contention even while the party is mulling to prop up local leaders and minority faces following the deliberations at its Chintan Shivir which was held in Udaipur RajasthanThe meeting will be chaired by Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi and attended by the general secretaries Sources said former Congress president Rahul Gandhi who is in London is likely to attend the meeting through video conferencingCongress has decided to contest three Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan while the party may fall short of numbers for one seat for which it will bank on the support of nonBJP MLAsNotably a threepoint formula has also been adopted in Rajasthan under which no MLA will be considered for the Rajya Sabha nominations while giving preferences for minority and local facesIn Chattisgarh Congress is confident to bag two seats in Rajya Sabha Further the party is expecting one seat each from Maharastra Tamil Nadu Karnataka and Madhya PradeshCongress is also expecting one seat from Jharkhand where it is in alliance with Jharkhand Mukti Morcha JMM Sources said JMM Chief and CM Hemant Soren has called a meeting of his party MLAs in Ranchi today but hes said to be unwilling to give the seat to CongressCongress is likely to finalize its Rajya sabha nominees by Saturday eveningSenior leader P Chidambaram whose Rajya Sabha tenure is ending from Maharashtra is under consideration from Tamil Nadu as Congress is all set to get the support of alliance partner DMKThe G23 leaders including Ghulam Nabi Azad Anand Sharma and Vivek Tankha are also said to be in contentionMeanwhile names of leaders from team Rahul Gandhi like Ajay Maken and Randeep Surjewala are also under considerationRajeev Shukla Mukul Wasnik Pramod Tiwari and Dr Ajoy Kumar are also hoping to bag the nominations A tribal leader from Rajasthan and one from the scheduled caste from Chattisgarh are likely to find Congress approval in the Saturday meetingSeveral members of the Rajya Sabha will retire between June 21 and August 1 Elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats spread across 15 states will take place on June 10 While 11 seats will fall vacant in Uttar Pradesh six members each will retire from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra five from Bihar and four each from Andhra Pradesh Rajasthan and KarnatakaThe BJP currently has 95 MPs and Congress has 29 members in the 245member houseThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever