Kharge files papers, assured of RS seat
Deve Gowda will need Cong support to enter RS
BENGALURU:
Congress stalwart Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday filed his nomination as the party’s candidate for the June 19 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka.
KPCC president D K Shivakumar and former CM and leader of the opposition Siddaramaiah were among those present when he filed his papers with Legislative Assembly Secretary M K Vishalakshi, who is the returning officer for the polls.
Earlier in the day, the Congress Legislature Party held a meeting, after which Shivakumar issued a ‘B-form’ to Kharge.
The Congress high command had announced Kharge’s name on June 5 as its RS candidate from Karnataka.
Four RS seats will fall vacant on June 25 after the retirement of Rajeev Gowda and BK Hariprasad of the Congress, Prabhakar Kore of the BJP and D Kupendra Reddy of the JDS.
June 9 is the last date for filing nominations.
Kharge’s victory is virtually assured as the state Congress has 68 MLAs and can win one seat on its own numbers.
This will be the first time the veteran Congressman enters Parliament ‘indirectly’, after 4 decades as a directly elected MP.
Popularly known as ‘Solillada Sardara’, (a leader who canot be defeated), Kharge tasted defeat for the first time when he lost the 2019 LS polls for the Gulbarga seat to the BJP’s Umesh Jadhav by a margin of 95,452 votes.
An MLA on nine occasions and a two-term Lok Sabha MP, he was the party floor leader in the previous Lok Sabha, and also held the Railway and Labour portfolios in the UPA government.
Besides, the 77-year-old veteran has served as minister in earlier Congress governments in Karnataka and also as state Congress chief.
Meanwhile, former PM HD Deve Gowda is the JDS candidate. The party has 34 seats in the assembly, short of the 44 seats that a winning candidate needs, and will need Congress ‘help’ to send Deve Gowda to the RS.
As for the BJP, with its assembly strength of 117 members (including the Speaker), it can win 2 seats easily.
The BJP’s central leadership on Monday snubbed the state leadership by picking Iranna Kadadi and Ashok Gasti as its RS choices from Karnataka.
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