Race heats up for ‘nominated RS seats’ but no clear answer yet!

New Delhi: Seven seats of nominated category in Rajya Sabha are vacant. Subramanian Swamy, Swapan Dasgupta, Roopa Ganguly, Suresh Gopi, Mary Kom, Narendra Jadhav and Chhatrapati Sambhaji have retired. Four of these MPs had declared themselves members of the BJP after being nominated while the other three remained independents. It is believed that this time BJP will nominate such people in all the seven seats, who can declare themselves as BJP members after taking oath. If this happens, then there will be 11 BJP MPs among the nominated category MPs. Out of the five remaining MPs, barring former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the remaining four MPs have declared themselves as members of the BJP.

The question is, who are those seven people, whom BJP will nominate in the Upper House. No one has any idea of the name, but looking at the regional equation of the retired MPs and the assembly elections to be held in the next few days, it is being speculated as to from which state the nominated category MPs will come. It is almost certain that a Kashmiri Pandit will be nominated. Anupam Kher may be nominated but an obstacle in his way is that his wife Kirron Kher is the party’s MP from Chandigarh. Nevertheless, in view of the elections to be held in Kashmir in the next few days, a nomination will be made from there.

Two people are retiring from West Bengal and at least one nomination will be from there as well. Will Swapan Dasgupta be repeated again? Union Home Minister Amit Shah had gone to Sourav Ganguly’s house to have food during his Bengal tour and since then his name is also being discussed for the Upper House. Two people are retiring from South India, Swamy from Tamil Nadu and Suresh Gopi from Kerala. Elections are yet to be held in Karnataka and Telangana. So, one member from either of these two states will be nominated and at least one member is likely to move to the Upper House from Maharashtra.