Special Correspondent
NewsBits.in
Bhopal: The Bharatiya Janata Party is eyeing all three Rajya Sabha seats that have fallen vacant in Madhya Pradesh. Along with its official candidates Anil Dave and MJ Akbar, the party also fielded Vinod Gotia, its state general secretary as an independent candidate on Tuesday.
Though the BJP is not officially owing Gotia’s candidature and Gotia himself said that he filed nomination as independent ‘because of a specific scenario’, political watchers are clear that the BJP wants to make the way to Rajya Sabha that much tougher for Congress candidate Vivek Tankha.
Tankha filed his nomination on Monday and is quite confident of his win, especially because only 58 votes (of MLAs) are required for a Rajya Sabha seat and the Congress has 57 MLAs in house. Gaining one extra vote from among four BSP and three independent MLAs would not be much of problem, the Congress surmises.
On other hand, for Gotia to win, he would have to garner support of nine additional votes apart from the 49 BJP votes that he can have. BJP has 165 MLAs in house and after the 116 votes required for win of official candidates Dave and Akbar, 49 votes would be available.
It would depend upon Gotia’s ability to break into the Congress camp or perhaps behind-the-scene parleys by senior BJP leaders for Gotia’s win.
Meanwhile, another independent candidate, Shashi Stella from Jabalpur has ensured that polling for RS seats has to take place on June 11.
