Rajya Sabha Polls: BJP declares names of two candidates, may pull off coup in Congress for third seat

The BJP on Wednesday declared two candidates— Rajkot-based lawyer Abhay Bharadwaj and a tribal leader from north Gujarat's Sabarkantha district Ramilaben Bara— for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls on March 26 in Gujarat.

It is believed that the party will release the name of another candidate to contest the third seat on the last minute despite it not having the required numbers.

Bharadwaj, a prominent criminal lawyer, was the defence lawyer for a group of accused in the Gulberg Society massacre case of 2002 post-Godhra riots.

Earlier in 2018, he was appointed as a part-time member of the 21st Law Commission of India.

Bharadwaj comes from an RSS background.

Ramilaben had contested Lok Sabha and Assembly polls as a BJP candidate in the past but was defeated by the Congress on all occasions except one in the 2003 bypoll.

The Rajya Sabha polls will be held for four seats and it is believed that BJP will contest the third seat for which speculation is rife that it will make the Congress MLAs to cross vote.

Some BJP leaders including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Wednesday hinted that an internal conflict is going on in the Congress, demanding change in the top leadership.

This only confirms the rumours surrounding a popular Congress leader, holding an important post in the party, trying to switch over to BJP with a couple of his colleagues.

"We don't count the Congress in Gujarat. Everybody knows their situation. Internal clashes are going on in the party to change the leadership. It's their matter and I don't want to say anything," Rupani told reporters in Gandhinagar when he was asked if the Gujarat Congress will have any impact with the situation in the neighbouring state, Madhya Pradesh, where Congress' top leader Jyotiraditya Scindia joined the saffron party.

Although state Congress chief Amit Chavda and other leaders brushed aside Rupani's claim and shot back that the chief minister should be worried about his "chair" since "a political conspiracy is being hatched in Delhi to overthrow him from the post."

Chavda went on to say that "Who counts Vijaybhai as chief minister? Go and ask state ministers and officers who actually has the remote control for running the show in Gujarat. As far as my party is concerned, I can say that team Congress will contest the Rajya Sabha polls and will win two seats."

While the Congress has confirmed that it will contest on two seats, the BJP, sources said, is trying to retain the three seats that it had held.

It has numbers to win two seats comfortably but it will have to break the Congress party or make Opposition MLAs cross-vote to win the third seat.

Gujarat has 182 Assembly seats, out of which BJP has 103 seats and the Congress 73. The Congress may get votes from Bharatiya Tribal Party that has two MLAs and one vote from the NCP and Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani is another voter who is likely to side with the Congress.

To win three seats, the BJP would need 111 first preference votes which is highly unlikely if the Congress MLAs remain intact.

While, the Congress needs just 74 seats to take away the two seats provided none of its MLAs is absent, cross-vote or defect. Last year, during the Rajya Sabha polls for two seats, Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor and his associate Dhavalsinh Jhala defected to the BJP. Both the seats went to the BJP. Similarly, in 2017, another BJP coup had left the Congress leadership in the lurch during the Rajya Sabha polls in which the Opposition party somehow managed to get its top leader Ahmed Patel elected.