Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Congress leaders Tuesday alleged poaching attempts by the BJP ahead of the June 18 Rajya Sabha polls and said the party has decided to move its MLAs to Congress-ruled Karnataka to prevent cross-voting and keep its camp united.
The 230-member state Assembly makes up the electoral college for the Rajya Sabha election. With the assembly’s effective strength at 229, a candidate requires 58 first-preference votes to secure election to the Upper House of Parliament.
The ruling BJP, which has 164 MLAs, is assured of winning two seats with 116 votes and has fielded party national general secretary Tarun Chugh and state unit secretary Rajneesh Agrawal.
The BJP later also fielded Mahesh Kewat, chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Fishermen Welfare Board, as its third candidate.
The Congress has nominated former MP Meenakshi Natarajan and expressed confidence of retaining enough support to secure her election, while Kewat’s entry has added a new dimension to the contest.
The Congress Legislature Party (CLP) held a meeting late Monday night at the residence of Leader of Opposition Umang Singhar. The legislators were consulted on the proposal to move them out of Madhya Pradesh until polling, according to sources.
All Congress MLAs were being shifted to Bengaluru in party-ruled Karnataka, Saunsar legislator Vijay Revanath Choure told PTI.
Congress MLAs Yadavendra Singh and Babu Jandel also confirmed that the legislators were being moved to Karnataka.
Speaking to PTI, LoP Singhar alleged that the BJP was trying to “buy” Congress MLAs and said all of them will be shifted to a party-ruled state.
He claimed some party MLAs told him that BJP members approached them with “bags full of notes,” but they turned them away.
The BJP’s “conspiracies” will fail on the voting day, the Congress leader asserted.
Yadavendra Singh said some MLAs were not in favour of being moved out, but since it was the party high command’s decision, everyone was being shifted.
He claimed the BJP was attempting to poach them, so the party’s top leaders decided to keep the MLAs together in a Congress-ruled state.
The BJP is attempting to create a rift within the Congress camp, the Opposition party leaders have alleged.
Of the three vacant seats in the state, the BJP can comfortably win two, while the Congress has an upper hand in terms of numbers for the third seat.
Nearly 60 Congress MLAs attended the meeting at Singhar’s residence late Monday night. One party MLA did not attend the meeting because he was in Delhi, while senior leader Kamal Nath participated online.
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Currently, the effective strength of the 230-member state assembly is 229. The BJP has 164 MLAs, and the Congress has 64, while the Bharat Adivasi Party holds one seat. Congress MLA Rajendra Bharti’s membership from the Datia constituency has been revoked, leaving one seat vacant.
The Madhya Pradesh High Court has barred Mukesh Malhotra, Congress MLA from Vijaypur in Sheopur district, from voting.
A petition has also been filed in the HC seeking the termination of the assembly membership of Nirmala Sapre, MLA from Bina in Sagar district. She is likely to vote for the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha election.
Sapre also met with Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Monday.
Amid this scenario, Congress’s effective tally could get reduced to 62, but it would still have 4 more votes than required to win the election.
Each candidate for the three Rajya Sabha seats requires 58 votes to win. Consequently, the BJP needs 116 votes to win two seats. After garnering 116 of the total 164 votes, the BJP will have 48 remaining votes.
The Congress appears to be taking a cautious approach in view of the 2020 political crisis, when the BJP toppled the Kamal Nath-led government by bringing Jyotiraditya Scindia and 22 other MLAs into its fold. Scindia is currently a minister in the NDA-led Union cabinet.
