The Congress circles were surprised by the party’s pick for the Rajya Sabha seat from Haryana, Karamvir Sing Baudh, who is seen as a low-profile Dalit ‘activist’ than a Haryana Congress leader of any consequence. While Baudh’s candidature is being attributed to Rahul Gandhi’s blessing given latter’s current theme of social justice and his promotion of ‘outside entries in the Congress’, the surprise candidate is also known as closely connected to K Raju, bureaucrat-turned-aid of Gandhi, who oversees AICC SC-ST-OBC cells.
The leadership picked a young Anurag Sharma, who recently became district Congress president of Kangra through the Rahul-Priyanaka driven DCC reforms , for the lone seat of Himachal Pradesh. While agreeing to pick a candidate from the Hill state rather than repeating last time’s mistake of fielding an outsider, Gandhi has reportedly pitched for the candidature of a young and relatively junior leader for the House of Elders.
As the DMK allotted Congress one Rajya Sabha (and 28 Assembly seats) in poll-bound Tamilnadu after the latter rolled back the demands for 35 seats and power-sharing, the Congress leadership fielded AICC secretary Christapher Tilak, a Dalit-Christian who also ensures the DMK leadership’s sensitivity to have the RS seats from the State are filled only by the Tamils.
While the renomination from Telangana of Abhishek Singhvi, who is fighting many sensitive legal cases of the Congress, especially the Gandhis, was a foregone conclusion, the second party seat went to Vem Narender Reddy, who is currently designated as an advisor to Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. The CM and Narender Reddy have been close to each other since their days in TDP. The Congress also re-nominated its outgoing member Phulo Devi Netam, who belongs to the Tribal community, from Chattisgarh.
