Bhopal: Away from active politics ever since his Lok Sabha debacle, senior Congress leader Jyotiradiya Scindia has now set his eyes on a Rajya Sabha nomination.
Three seats from Madhya Pradesh quota, held by Digvijaya Singh, Prabhat Jha and Satyanarayan Jatiya, will be vacated in April 2020.
With Singh, who too lost the general elections in May this year, unlikely to give up his claim on the seat in the upper House of Parliament, Scindia might not have a smooth journey ahead.
The former Union minister is said to have been sulking ever since the party leadership put Kamal Nath in the chief minister’s chair last December after the Assembly polls.
He had then shifted his focus on leading the party in the state as the Pradesh Congress Committee chief, but here too, the scion of the erstwhile royal family of Gwalior hasn’t had much luck as Nath continues to cling to the role.
Scindia had even openly backed the BJP-led Union government's move to abrogate provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir.
However, of late, Scindia, who had been critical of Nath’s government on several occasions, has toned down his rhetoric significantly. In the last one month, the two senior leaders were seen together twice. But the politics of Rajya Sabha nomination has its own aspects.
Both the Congress, which has 115 MLAs in the MP Assembly, and the BJP with 107 legislators would try to get one RS seat each, while the third seat would require support of some independents and might pose a tricky situation.
If party insiders are to be believed, both Singh and Scindia, known as adversaries, are eyeing the first seat for a smooth journey. “The party leadership will surely face a tough situation when it’s time for actual nominations,” a senior Congress leader, who did not wish to be named, told News18.
Health Minister Tulsi Silawat, known as a staunch Scindia loyalist, said, “He has fulfilled the duty assigned to him by the party diligently in the past and it’s high time, he is assigned a significant responsibility in accordance with his abilities.”
Meanwhile, given Singh’s sway on the Nath government, his re-nomination is unlikely to face much hurdle.
For the BJP, sitting MP Prabhat Jha is hoping for a re-nomination. Other contenders in the saffron camp are Kailash Vijayvargiya, former advocate general Ravinandan Singh, ex-minister Lal Singh Arya and senior Jabalpur-based politician Vinod Gotia.
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