Sena fields candidate for RS post

The election to the post of deputy chairman of the Rajya Sabha received a twist yesterday with the Shiv Sena's Eknath Thakur filing his nomination papers along with K Rehman Khan of the Congress.

Khan's candidature was announced only after the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cleared the his name as well and declared that it would field no candidate.

"Ghulam Nabi Azad spoke to us saying the Congress will field Khan, we decided to make a fine distinction between a unanimous and 'unopposed' election," said BJP spokerspeson Sushma Swaraj.

"We agreed not to put up our own candidate but we also refused to endorse the Congress candidate," she said.

We were surprised to know that the Sena had fielded Thakur for the post, which would force an election," said Swaraj. The BJP was trying to persuade the Sena to get Thakur to withdraw his nomination, she added.

Pramod Mahajan, incharge of Maharashtra party unit, would speak to Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray, she said. The BJP would neither support the Congress nor the Sena candidate, she said.

"It will appear to be a token support as the Opposition does not have the numbers. In this scenario, it is better to have an unopposed election," she said.

On the consensus, she said we wanted a candidate who belonged neither to the Congress nor to the BJP. But the parliamentary Affairs minister insisted that the Congress wanted at least one of the four parliamentary posts to be occupied by the Congress, she added.

"When the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power we never insisted like this, we gave in to the Congress demand," she said.

It will be a rare occasion when an election will decide the new Rajya Sabha deputy chairman.