Congress to be unrepresented from Gujarat in Rajya Sabha for first time

New Delhi: Congress is set to go unrepresented from Gujarat in Rajya Sabha for the first time as Election Commission announced polls for 24 seats in the House on June 18. BJP's two minority faces in govt and Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and former PM H D Deve Gowda figure among those retiring from Upper House. Going by current strength of state assemblies, where RS elections will be held on June 18, Congress may gain at least one seat and governing NDA will sweep all four seats in Andhra Pradesh amid possibility of an intriguing contest in at least two states, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, if BJP chooses to do so. The 24 seats are spread across Andhra Pradesh (4), Gujarat (4), Karnataka (4), Madhya Pradesh (3), Rajasthan (3), Jharkhand (2) and one vacancy each in four northeast states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. With Shaktisinh Gohil, the lone Congress MP in RS from Gujarat, retiring and his party lacking numbers to retain the seat, the BJP bastion will no longer have any member from the rival party in RS. Against the 12 outgoing seats, BJP is all but certain to retain 11 and can bag even more if an ally like TDP backs its nominee or if a few members of rival parties support its nominees, a political manoeuvring it has often pulled off in the past. Union ministers Ravneet Singh 'Bittu' and George Kurian, BJP's Sikh and Christian faces from Punjab and Kerala respectively, will retire from RS next month. Bittu was elected from Rajasthan and Kurian from MP as BJP lacked requisite strength in assemblies of their home states. JD(S) leader Deve Gowda, who is 93, has indicated that he will not be coming back to RS and the numbers in Karnataka assembly anyway suggest that BJP-JD(S) alliance can win only one seat against the three it currently has. Kharge (83), too, is among the retiring members from the state. While YSR Congress has three outgoing MPs, its rout in the 2024 assembly polls means that it cannot win any seat. In Jharkhand, NDA is four short of 28 MLAs needed to win one seat. In MP where former CM Digvijaya Singh is among the three retiring MPs, Congress has 64 MLAs against the 58 needed to win one seat. BJP, which will have nearly 48 votes to spare after retaining its two seats, can force a contest.