NEW DELHI: As the curtain falls on the budget session of Parliament, top minds of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha, including the party’s chief whip Jairam Ramesh, former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s close aide Ambika Soni are set to retire before the monsoon session is convened.
While some may make a comeback to the upper house, others will have a long wait to be elected to the Rajya Sabha following the grand old party’s shrinking footprint in state Assemblies. The loss in the recent five Assembly elections has further hurt the party’s prospects in Rajya Sabha seats.
In the second lot of vacancies that will be created between June and August this year, the party will see senior leaders and key speakers during important debates in the house -- Ramesh, who represents Karnataka, and Chidambaram, elected from Maharashtra -- retiring from the upper house.
Sources said the party is expected to bring them back from states where it is likely to gain seats.
The party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma retired on April 2. Sharma’s other G23 dissident colleagues in the Rajya Sabha – senior advocate Kapil Sibal, elected from Uttar Pradesh, and Vivek Tankha, elected from Madhya Pradesh – are also completing their six-year terms. Both are unlikely to make a comeback to the house. Also retiring is Chhaya Verma, elected from Chhattisgarh, who has repeatedly raised issues of importance in the upper house.
The party is expected to gain a few seats from Rajasthan (4 vacancies), where the party is in government, and in states where it is in an alliance – Tamil Nadu (6 vacancies), Maharashtra (6 vacancies), and Jharkhand (2 vacancies). The party’s present strength in the upper house is 30.
In the Rajya Sabha elections on March 31, the Congress has already lost two seats in Assam and one in Himachal Pradesh. In the next phase of the Rajya Sabha elections between June-August, the Congress is set to lose two seats in Punjab and one each in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.