Gujarat: Exodus in Congress puts BJP in driver's seat for Rajya Sabha polls

AHMEDABAD: The BJP is poised to retain three of the four Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat, for which elections will be held on March 26.
Four Congress MLAs submitted their resignations to the Gujarat assembly speaker, reducing the party’s strength to 69 MLAs in the assembly of 182. There is a possibility of some more Congress MLAs resigning in days to come.
Speaker Rajendra Trivedi confirmed that he has received resignations of four Congress MLAs “between 5 pm and midnight on Saturday”. The MLAs whose resignations have been accepted include Somabhai Patel, J V Kakadiya, Pradyumansinh Jadeja and Pravin Maru. None of the four Congress MLAs who resigned could be reached for comment.
With four resignations, the strength of the Gujarat assembly has been reduced to 176, and a party will require 36 first preference votes to get a nominee elected to the upper house. With the Congress’ strength having been reduced to 69 MLAs, it will clearly not be in a position to get two nominees elected to the RS – a possibility created due to the party’s good show in the 2017 assembly polls where it had won 77 seats as against 61 in the previous polls. Congress has nominated two senior leaders – Bharatsinh Solanki and Shaktisinh Gohil – as candidates for the election. One of them might have to withdraw his nomination to avoid facing an embarrassing defeat.
Congress hopeful of winning 2
The Congress however, put up a brave face on Sunday, saying that it was hopeful of winning both seats and that no decision has been taken yet to withdraw the name of one of its two candidates. “The speaker has not spelt out names of MLAs who resigned, so we will wait until Monday,” said GPCC chief Amit Chavda. Leader of opposition Paresh Dhanani said, “We enjoy the support or the NCP, BTP and independents and we are in a position to win two RS seats.”
State BJP president Jitu Vaghani said the Congress has already lost the numbers game and some of the MLAs flown to Jaipur will also vote for BJP candidates. “There is a tussle among the two Congress candidates over who should withdraw his nomination,” Vaghani added.
Despite himself contesting the RS election from Maharashtra, AICC Gujarat in-charge Rajeev Satav rushed to Ahmedabad on Sunday afternoon and held a series of meetings to assess the situation arising out of the spate of resignations by Congress MLAs.
The term of office of four RS members – Chunibhai Gohel, Lalsinh Vadodiya, Shambhuprasad Tundiya and Madhusudan Mistry – elected from Gujarat, ends on April 9. While Mistry represents the Congress, the remaining three represent the BJP.