By IANS
New Delhi : At least nine ministers in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s council of ministers, including high-profile ones like Murli Deora and Prithviraj Chavan, are set to retire from the Rajya Sabha next month and moves are afoot to get them re-elected.
Apart from Petroleum Minister Deora and Minister in Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) Chavan, the others are: Minister of Mines T. Subbirami Reddy, Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta, Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz, Minister for Statistics and Programme Implementation G.K. Vasan, Minister for Planning M.V. Rajasekharan, Minister of State for Steel Akhilesh Das, and Minister of State for Personnel and Parliamentary Affairs Suresh Pachauri.
They will have to face the elections to the upper house expected to take place in April. Sixty Rajya Sabha members are due to retire next month, including 24 from the Congress and 11 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Congress leaders privately admit that it would be a major task to get their MPs re-elected as the party’s strength in many state assemblies has reduced following electoral losses.
While the re-election of Deora and Chavan is almost assured from the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)-ruled Maharashtra, the political future of Suresh Pachauri is undecided.
Rumours are rife that Pachauri, who is reported to be close to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her family, may go back to Madhya Pradesh to lead the party in the assembly elections later this year. Pachauri’s close friends say that he could be a chief ministerial candidate for the Congress in the state where its electoral prospects are bright.
Reddy and Soz hope to get re-elected from Andhra Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir respectively, where the Congress has the numbers to support them.
Congress party treasurer Motilal Vora, party chief whip in Rajya Sabha Prema Cariappa and senior party leader Janardhan Poojary will have to seek re-election to continue their membership in the upper house.
Prem Chand Gupta, MP from Bihar and a close associate of Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, appears to be confident about his re-election.
The BJP is confident that it has the numbers to send back more members to the Rajya Sabha this time. Film star-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who was elected from Bihar, is desperately trying to retain his seat, but some BJP leaders oppose this saying that Rajya Sabha members should not have more than two terms.
Former Gujarat chief minister Keshubhai Patel is another BJP MP due to retire. However, he may have to pay a heavy price for his stance against Chief Minister Narendra Modi, whose clout in the party is getting stronger.
Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, an independent from Karnataka, has to seek re-election to remain in the upper house. He has reportedly been offered a seat from Maharashtra by his friend and NCP leader Sharad Pawar.
Former foreign minister K. Natwar Singh, who had snapped his ties with the Congress over the Iraq oil-for-food scam, is also seeking re-election.