Jaipur : Elections for the four Rajya Sabha seats from Rajasthan would be held here on Saturday.
Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, senior BJP leader Om Prakash Mathur, Harshvardhan Singh and Ramkumar Verma are the BJP candidates from Rajasthan.
Om Prakash Mathur, who is considered close to the party’s central leadership, is also the national vice president of the BJP. Harshvardhan Singh and Ramkumar Verma are the new faces.
Former union minister and industrialist Kamal Morarka is also contesting as an Independent candidate. Morarka is supported by some of the opposition parties, including the Congress which has 24 legislators in the 200-member state assembly.
To win, a candidate would require 41 votes. The BJP’s strength in the assembly is 160. Coupled with support from two National Unionist Zamindara Party MLAs and a few Independent lawmakers, the BJP seems to be in firm control.
“We have support of 166 MLAs, so we are fully confident that our four candidates will win,” a senior BJP leader told IANS.
The Congress, which held a legislature party meeting here on Thursday specifically on the issue of the Rajya Sabha polls, issued a whip for supporting Morarka late Thursday night.
“We are going to support Moraraka,” Rameshwar Dudi, Leader of Opposition in the state assembly and senior Congress leader, told IANS.
Since Wednesday the BJP has kept all its leislators in a hotel on the outskirts of the city where a training camp was also organised on Thursday and Friday in the presence of senior party leaders, including Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and state president Ashok Parnami.
Counting of votes will be taken up on Saturday evening.