Kamal Nath for Cong’s Rajya Sabha seat from state, or an outsider?

Bhopal: Speculations are rife that former chief minister Kamal Nath may be sent to the Rajya Sabha in the seat vacated by Digvijaya Singh after two terms. The political grapevine started discussions after Kamal Nath met AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge in New Delhi on Wednesday.

While three seats from Madhya Pradesh will get vacated, two will be for BJP’s candidates. In Jan this year, former chief minister Digvijaya Singh announced that he will vacate Congress’ lone seat to the Upper House going for polls in June from Madhya Pradesh.

Sources in the state Congress said that the AICC’s list is long for Upper House seats for June. Top functionaries of the party who are on that list include Mallikarjun Kharge himself, Pawan Kheda -- former political secretary to erstwhile Delhi CM Shiela Dikshit, former Rajya Sabha MP B K Hariprasad and national spokesperson Supriya Shrinate among others. If Kamal Nath is also on the list, it will not make the selection process any easier because with the 26 Upper House seats vacated; the Congress will have only five. In such a scenario, the one seat in Madhya Pradesh is also crucial.

It is true that Kamal Nath was asked to be the AICC president in 2022-23 when former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot turned down the offer for the top position in the party. But after the political drama of Feb 2024 when there was a strong buzz of him and his son Nakul Nath joining the BJP, the Congress has not given him any position. One time MP from Chhindwara and Kamal Nath’s political heir Nakul Nath also lost the Lok Sabha election that year.

But even after the 2024 damage, Kamal Nath is the only Congress stalwart other than Digvijaya Singh, who can ensure that cross-voting does not happen within the Congress Legislative Party (CLP). In the Upper House elections held in March this year, cross-voting became a major issue for the Congress in Haryana and Orissa.

State party functionaries claim any other candidate other than Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh may not get acceptance of the CLP of 61 MLAs with voting rights. One MLA Rajendra Bharti lost his membership from the House after a Rouse Avenue court in Delhi sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment in a bank fraud case, another sitting MLA Mukesh Malhotra lost his voting right after a Supreme Court order and a third MLA Nirmala Sapre has a defection case pending against her in High Court – she may abstain from voting.

The magic number for a Rajya Sabha seat in Madhya Pradesh is 58 and Congress is walking a tightrope with only three more votes. The BJP meanwhile has 165 MLA in the assembly and will comfortably send its candidates for its two seats unopposed and then have an excess of 49 MLAs. A senior spokesman of the state BJP said that if there is factionalism within the Congress, the BJP will not deter from seizing the opportunity of calling for elections for the third Upper House seat.