BENGALURU: Three Congress candidates, including All-India Congress Committee (AICC) President Mallikarjun Kharge, and one BJP nominee were declared elected unanimously to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka on Thursday.
Apart from Kharge, the other two Congress candidates elected are AICC media and publicity department chairman Pawan Khera and the son of former Union minister K Rahman Khan, Mansoor Ali Khan. BJP’s Prof M Nagaraja was also declared elected.
All four members will have a full term of six years. The elections, to be held on June 18, were declared to fill four vacant seats.
Will raise issues concerning state, country in RS: Mansoor
As only four candidates filed nominations, elections were not necessitated, and as a result, Assembly Secretary MK Vishalakshi declared the four candidates elected unanimously to the Upper House.
Khera, who was in Vidhana Soudha, told reporters that it was a matter of great pride for him. “It is a matter of great pride for me that I was given this opportunity by my leadership to serve the people of Karnataka through the Rajya Sabha seat here. I hope to do justice to all the aspirations. I also hope that the next time when I address you (media), I’ll try and speak in Kannada, which is a beautiful language,” he said, after receiving his election certificate.
It is Khera’s maiden entry into Parliament. He started his career as political secretary to former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit. He had worked closely in the Congress war room ahead of 2023 Assembly polls in Karnataka.
Mansoor Ali Khan had lost from Bengaluru Central in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by a whisker. He was in the limelight in the vote-theft campaign launched by LoP Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, alleging that the BJP had won the Bengaluru Central seat by illegal means in the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency.
Mansoor said that he will take up the issues of the state and the country in the Rajya Sabha.
Prof M Nagaraja, who hails from the Kuruba community, is an academician from Hubballi. An RSS member, he had served as ABVP state president, state BJP vice-president, and a member of the Karnataka Public Service Commission in the past.
He thanked BJP central leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah and the state BJP core committee, which proposed his name. “I am an ordinary party worker. I will make use of the opportunity to meet the expectations of the party,” he said.
