MUMBAI,March 7 2012: A former vegetable vendor, a former chief minister and a former Lok Sabha speaker, all from Maharashtra, are in the fray for the six vacancies in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament.Biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha will be held on March 30, and lobbying for the six key seats from Maharshtra has begun in right earnest. Members of the state legislature vote for the candidates for the upper house. Maharashtra’s former controversial chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who is now the minister for science and technology, and former journalist and minister of state for parliamentary affairs, Rajiv Shukla, are the two sitting ministers and MPs who are seeking re-election. Despite Deshmukh having been reprimanded by the courts in recent months, he is expected to retain the Rajya Sabha seat as he has the backing of the Congress high command. However, Shukla faces opposition from legislators in Maharashtra, who feel he is an ‘outsider’ and should not be given a ticket from the state’s quota. Former Lok Sabha speaker and Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi also retires at the end of his six-year term in the upper house. Though Joshi is in the good books of party supremo Bal Thackeray and his son, Uddhav, his inability to garner votes for the party in the recent civic elections in Dadar, his home turf, could go against him. Ramdas Athawale, who heads his faction of the Republican Party of India (RPI) — and who recently entered into a tie-up with the Sena-BJP in the civic polls — is also keen to get a Rajya Sabha nomination. He might replace Joshi as the Sena candidate. Bal Apte, the low-profile outgoing BJP MP, is also unlikely to be renominated. Rajesh, son of former West Bengal governor and industrialist Viren Shah, is seen as a contender for the post, while Kirit Somaiya, who lost the Lok Sabha elections, is also an aspirant. A Nagpur from builder is also in the race for Apte’s seat. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which had two Rajya Sabha MPs from Maharashtra – Govindrao Adik and Ranjitsinh Mohite-Patil — will find it difficult this time to ensure the success of two of its candidates. Both are keen on retaining their seats for another term, though Adik is considered to have an edge over Mohite-Patil. Sanjay Kakade, a former vegetable vendor from Baramai — the pocket borough of Sharad Pawar, the NCP boss and union agriculture minister — has also announced that he will contest the elections for the upper house. Kakade, who is now a prominent builder, expects support from the NCP and other parties, besides independents.
