Sometimes nominating candidates for the Rajya Sabha can be a tough bet as the Congress recently had to fight several odds — within the party and outside — to fill the openings in the Upper House. For its high command, the most difficult negotiation was to push the case of its two senior leaders, Jairam Ramesh and Kapil Sibal.
Mr. Sibal’s nomination from Uttar Pradesh not only left the lower caste and minority leaders disgruntled, it also demanded the Congress high command to negotiate with strong-headed politicians like Mulayam Singh.
It takes the support of 35 MLAs to nominate someone for the Rajya Sabha from U.P. and the Congress has only 29 legislators. Sources said Sonia Gandhi and her political adviser Ahmed Patel called up SP chief Mulayam Singh to negotiate the support of six SP legislators to ensure Mr. Sibal’s entry in the Upper House.
Mulayam, however, was in a fix because Satish Sharma had also reached out to him for the same kind of support, sources added. In Mr. Ramesh’s case, a senior Congress leader said the party high command had to wrestle with its own leader and Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.
“He [Mr. Siddaramaiah] wanted to nominate a leader from the Scheduled Caste community,” the leader said.
Apart from Mr. Sibal and Mr. Ramesh, the party has named former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram from Maharashtra and Vivek Thanka from Madhya Pradesh.
Other candidates include Oscar Fernandes from Karnataka, Congress general secretary Ambika Soni from Punjab, Chaya Verma from Chhattisgarh and Pradeep Tamta from Uttarakhand.
