Rajya Sabha polls: With a day to go for nomination withdrawal, JD(S) holds on to hopes

With just a day left for withdrawal of nominations for the June 10 Rajya Sabha polls, a determined JD(S) is pushing ahead to persuade the Congress to withdraw its second candidate Mansoor Khan and instead support its own candidate Kupendra Reddy as both parties share the common goal of defeating the BJP.

JD(S) veteran HD Deve Gowda is learnt to have convinced Congress leader Mallikarjuna Kharge to take it up with Sonia Gandhi as Karnataka's Congress leaders DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah have not responded to the idea.

JD(S) leaders TA Saravana and BM Farooq met Siddaramaiah with this proposal on Wednesday, but things have not progressed as the Congress has strategically proposed a Muslim candidate as a strategy to win over the support of minorities in the next year's assembly elections. Kharge is said to have discussed it at the AICC level, sources said, but details are not known yet. Some Congressmen also said Siddaramaiah is unlikely to give up on Khan, an educationist and KPCC general secretary, easily as there is no love lost between him and former chief minister HD Kumaraswamy. Both don't spare an opportunity to attack each other in public.


Four Rajya Sabha seats are falling vacant this month for which six candidates, including union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, are contesting.

Sitharaman and actor-turned-politician Jaggesh of the BJP and Jairam Ramesh of the Congress will have an easy win as they will get votes that are needed for their victory.

The JD(S) and Congress are fighting for the fourth seat, and if both retain their candidates, the BJP will walk away with the fourth seat for which senior BJP leader Lahar Singh Siroya has filed his nomination papers.