Samajwadi Party fields RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary for RS polls
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary will be the joint candidate of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and RLD for the Rajya Sabha (RS) elections. The Akhilesh Yadav-led party has already announced its support for former Congressman Kapil Sibal, who is contesting as an independent candidate. Former MP Javed Ali Khan also filed his nomination as an SP candidate on Wednesday.
- The Uttar Pradesh Assembly has 403 elected members and a candidate will require a minimum of 34 votes for winning the RS seat.
- The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will get eight members elected to the RS.
- The SP and its allies, RLD and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), with 125 MLAs, will manage to ensure the victory of three candidates.
Elections to 57 RS seats across 15 states will be held on June 10. With 31 members, Uttar Pradesh sends the maximum number of members to the Upper House. The 11 retiring state MPs this time, include five from the BJP, three from the SP, two from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and one from the Indian National Congress (INC).
The RLD contested the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in alliance with the SP. The RLD won only eight out of 33 seats, while the SP bagged 111 seats. NDTV quoted sources as saying that Yadav had called Chaudhary on Thursday morning to apprise him of his decision that the RLD leader was the party's final choice for the Upper House.
By announcing support to Chaudhary, the SP laid to rest the speculations that Dimple Yadav, an ex-MP and Yadav's wife, would be the third candidate for the RS. Meanwhile, PTI sources said that the SP was likely to field Dimple in the by-election to the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat, which had fallen vacant after Yadav resigned from the Lok Sabha in March.
Among those whose RS tenures are ending include Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Siddharth of the BSP, and SP's Sukhram Singh Yadav, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, and Reoti Raman Singh. The five retiring Rajya Sabha MPs of the BJP are Zafar Islam, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Sanjay Seth, Surendra Nagar, and Jai Prakash Nishad. Former Congress heavyweight Sibal's tenure is also set to end in July.
