Jairam Ramesh?s ministerial berth appears to be safe for the moment but not his Rajya Sabha seat. He, along with his ministerial colleagues Anand Sharma and Ambika Soni, will be retiring from the Rajya Sabha in July, and if initial reports are to be believed, replacement seats for them are scarce on the ground.
As per the parliamentary procedure, one third of the Rajya Sabha retires every two years and elections are held for the same from an electoral college based on state assemblies. By that calculation, the ruling Congress party will only be able to retain barely 12 seats out of the 17 members it would be losing to retirements. The total number of seats coming up for re-election in July is 56. Logic dictates that ministers and senior leaders get first dibs on Rajya Sabha renominations from the party, but in the Congress, this is turning out to be easier said than done.
The first meeting to decide nominees from Andhra Pradesh was held on Thursday, and by all accounts, feedback from the state unit of the Congress has not been very encouraging. The old conflict between central decision and local aspirations is raising its head. ?Of the old incumbents, the claims of Hanumantha Rao, the party?s prominent voice from Telengana, JD Seelam, a prominent Scheduled Caste face of the party and industrialist Girish Kumar Sanghi and former chief minister N Janardhana Reddy as very strong,? said a source in the Congress. For commerce minister Anand Sharma, the smart money has been put on a seat from Rajasthan, with the Maharashtra unit deciding to put its foot down on a centrally chosen candidate rather than a local one. The only one sitting pretty appears to be information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni whose nomination from Punjab is almost certain.
?The problem will arise when you add to the mix the fact that the party has to accommodate Gandhi family loyalist Captain Satish Sharma, whose term from Uttarakhand is getting over, former ministers Oscar Fernandes retiring from Karnataka and Suresh Pachauri promised rehabilitation after a stint of exile in Madhya Pradesh,? said the source. AICC office bearer BK Hariprasad is also hunting for a seat, he will be retiring from Karnataka along with Oscar Fernandes.
The old economic problem of distributing scarce resources among many seems to have hit the Congress. Whatever the distribution, these will be jittery days for these Union ministers.