All India Congress Committee (AICC) President Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday filed his nomination papers for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections from Karnataka at the Vidhana Soudha complex. Kharge is the Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha, and his term in the Upper House of Parliament is coming to an end on June 25.
Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi flew from New Delhi to Bengaluru to accompany the AICC party president to file his papers. Karnataka Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, former CM Siddaramaiah, Congress general secretaries Randeep Singh Surjewala and K C Venugopal, and several ministers were also present, where the nomination papers were submitted to the Assembly secretary M K Vishalakshi at the Vidhana Soudha.
Mallikarjun Kharge belongs to Kalaburagi and represented the Gurmatkal Assembly seat before he entered the Lok Sabha.The nomination filing took place at the office of the Returning Officer in the Vidhana Soudha complex.Congress MLA Sharath Bachegowda said, “We have the numbers to comfortably elect nominees Mallikarjun Kharge, Mansoor Ali Khan and Pawan Khera comfortably to Rajya Sabha.”On Kharge, Bachegowda said Kharge has been fighting like a “lion” in the Rajya Sabha against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s discrimination and unfriendly programmes of the Union Government ruled by the BJP.
Mansoor Ali Khan, a nominee of the Congress party, thanked the party leader for his nomination to the Rajya Sabha. He assured to take up issues of the State in Rajya Sabha and a lot of national issues as well. “At this point of time, we are going through a phase wherein the opposition leaders are not allowed to speak on subjects inconvenient to the ruling BJP at the centre. I plan to raise all these issues in Rajya Sabha, said Mansoor.
The Congress on Thursday released its list of seven candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, scheduled to be held on June 18.The party has also nominated Mansoor Ali Khan and Pawan Khera from Karnataka, Meenakshi Natarajan from Madhya Pradesh.Neeraj Dangi has been nominated from Rajasthan, while Praveen Chakravarty has been fielded from Tamil Nadu and Pranav Jha from Jharkhand.
Earlier, on June 3, the Election Commission issued a notification for biennial elections to 24 Rajya Sabha seats from ten states.This includes four seats each in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, three seats each in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, two seats in Jharkhand, and one seat each in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur and Meghalaya. The filing of nominations has begun, and the last date is June 8.
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