Mallikarjun Kharge, Bhupesh Baghel appointed observers ahead of Rajya Sabha polls

New Delhi: Ahead of the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has appointed senior party leaders, including Mallikarjun Kharge and Bhupesh Baghel, as observers. While Kharge has been made the observer for Maharashtra, Baghel and Rajeev Shukla have been made observers for Haryana, and Pawan Kumar Bansal and T S Singh Deo for Rajasthan.

The Congress is seeking to ensure that its candidates win the Rajya Sabha (RS) elections in Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, while the BJP has put its weight behind independent candidates in Haryana and Rajasthan.

AICC general secretary Ajay Maken is the Congress candidate from Haryana, where two seats have fallen vacant. The Congress and the BJP are likely to get one seat each, but the BJP has backed media baron Kartikeya Sharma as an independent.

Sharma is the son of Venod Sharma and son-in-law of former Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma. Both are considered close to former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

The Congress needs 31 votes to win the seat and has as many MLAs. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is banking on cross-voting.

For the four Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan, the Congress has fielded three candidates — Randeep Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari. While the Congress is sure to get two seats, it needs 15 more votes to win the third seat of Tiwari. The BJP has fielded its former minister Ghanshyam Tiwari, and backed media baron Subhash Chandra as an independent for the second seat.

In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena and the BJP will battle it out for the sixth seat of Rajya Sabha as none of the seven candidates in the fray — four of the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and three of BJP — withdrew their nominations on Friday.

The Congress has also fielded another candidate Mansoor Ali Khan in Karnataka, where the election will be held on June 10 for four seats. Jairam Ramesh is the other Congress candidate. The Congress is expecting three seats in Rajasthan and the BJP is expecting one of its own and is supporting an independent and Subhash Chandra for the fourth seat.

Meanwhile, nearly 70 Congress MLAs from Rajasthan are camping at a hotel in Udaipur ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections to the four seats in which the party fears horse trading by the opposition BJP, party sources said.

The Congress, with its 108 MLAs in the state assembly, is set to win two seats.

After winning the two seats, the party will have 26 surplus votes, 15 short of the required 41 to win the third seat. On the other hand, the BJP has 71 MLAs in the state assembly and is set to win one seat after which it will be left with 30 surplus votes.

The Congress has also shifted its MLAs in Haryana to a resort in Raipur in Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh. Of the 57 vacancies in Rajya Sabha, 41 candidates in 11 states have so far been elected unopposed. The elections will be held for 16 seats in four states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka.