The Rajya Sabha elections this year will not be a smooth run. A conflict has already erupted between Congress and BJP over their respective nominations.
Congress’ Lekhram Sahu will be going up against BJP’s Saroj Pandey on March 23rd. Lekhram Sahu has written to the Election Commission where he called for the disqualification of 18 of BJP’s MLAs. He has written accusing them of holding offices of profit. Seven BJP MLAs according to Sahu’s letter hold positions in various commissions, one of them is Brijmohan Agarwal, the 11 others are in the positions of parliamentary secretaries.
According to the BJP, this is Congress’ way of playing politics. A BJP leader said, “They are trying to get MLAs disqualified now only to affect the Rajya Sabha election. Is this not low politics?” BJP is confident that Durg MP, Saroj Pandey will emerge victorious in the upcoming election on March 23rd.
Congress though will not be dropping the issue, but the decision on the matter depends on the Governor. The post of the parliamentary secretary has been creating much talk in Chattisgarh and the demand for disqualification is something Congress has been pushing for a while now. Still, BJP does hold the advantage in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections. A judgement on the matter though will be delivered in April. Bhupesh Baghel state Congress president said, “We have gone to the Governor many times on this issue, but he has taken no action. We will go to him again.”
Lekhram Sahu is Congress’ OBC opponent against BJP’s Saroj Pandey. Congress’ stand is that BJP had ignored the OBC community in the state of Chattisgarh. There has been some unrest among the OBC Sahu community leaders in the BJP. Congress saw that BJP should have considered this while fielding candidates. But as far as the elections go, BJP makes up 49 members of the assembly, Congress has a share of 39 members and BSP has one member.