New Delhi, June 5 (). Congress has intensified its preparations for the upcoming Rajya Sabha biennial elections. Following the approval of party president Mallikarjun Kharge, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) has appointed senior leaders Bhupesh Baghel and Ajay Sharma as observers for Jharkhand.
This step of Congress is being considered an important part of the preparations for the Rajya Sabha elections to be held on June 18, 2026.
The party has so far announced seven candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections to be held in 10 states. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday filed his nomination from Karnataka, formally finalizing his candidature.
The candidates announced by the Congress include Mallikarjun Kharge, Pawan Kheda and Mansoor Ali Khan from Karnataka, Meenakshi Natarajan from Madhya Pradesh, Praveen Chakraborty from Tamil Nadu, Neeraj Dangi from Rajasthan and Pranab Jha from Jharkhand.
Elections will be held for 24 biennially vacant seats of Rajya Sabha and three by-election seats in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. The last date for filing nominations is June 8, while scrutiny of nomination papers will take place on June 9. Candidates will be able to withdraw their names till June 11 and the counting of votes will take place on the evening of June 18.
Kharge’s current tenure in Karnataka ends on June 25. On the basis of numerical strength in the Assembly, Congress is confident that it will be successful in winning three out of four seats in the state.
Rajya Sabha elections are held on the basis of proportional representation under the single transferable vote system, hence political alliances and the number of MLAs play a decisive role.
Congress is the second largest ally of the JMM-led coalition government in Jharkhand. Congress has 16 MLAs in the 81-member assembly.
Recently, the party has formed a 36-member Political Affairs Committee to strengthen the organization in the state, in which state president Keshav Mahato Kamlesh and former minister Alamgir Alam have also been included.
Citing the number of its MLAs, Congress had demanded a Rajya Sabha seat from the alliance and under the same, Pranab Jha has been made its candidate. Although relations between JMM and Congress remain cooperative, the Congress also maintains its independent political identity on issues such as land acquisition, displacement and mining.
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