As the countdown for the Rajya Sabha elections narrows down, the ruling BJP in Haryana has lodged all its legislators in a resort in Chandigarh, while the state Congress unit, fearing poaching from the saffron outfit, will reportedly fly back all its MLAs on Friday morning, just ahead of the voting.

Two seats from Haryana will be going to polls for the Upper House on June 10 with three candidates in fray. The BJP-JJP alliance needs the backing of 31 MLAs, while the Congress needs the support of 30 MLAs for their respective candidates to win.

The RS polls were necessitated in the two seats as BJP-backed Independent candidate Subhash Chandra and Delhi-based BJP leader Dushyant Gautam will be completing their terms on August 1.

The BJP has named former Transport Minister Krishnan Panwar, who is expected to sail through with the support of 40 legislators. The party, along with its ally JJP, which has 10 MLAs, has also decided to back NewsX owner Kartikeya Sharma. Sharma is in a seemingly favourable position after INLD’s Abhay Chautala and Haryana Lokhit Party’s Gopal Kanda also extended their support to the media baron.

Senior Congress leader Ajay Maken, who will be contesting RS polls from the state, is also comfortably placed arithmetically unless there is cross-voting. Congress has 31 MLAs in the 90-member Haryana Legislative Assembly, one more than the number required for Maken to win. However, only 28 out of 31 Congress MLAs had reached the Raipur resort last week, while three leaders including Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi and Kiran Chaudhary chose to stay out.

Many senior Congress leaders like P Chidambaram and Maken, himself, have tried reaching out to the disgruntled leader. In the last couple of weeks leading up to the RS polls, internal dissent in the state Congress unit surfaced as Uday Bhan, a Bhupinder Singh Hooda loyalist, was chosen as the state Congress president instead of Bishnoi, who had the backing of Randeep Surjewala, among others.

Meanwhile, the Haryana Congress unit was confident that their candidate would win easily. “We have got sufficient numbers and our candidate will win comfortably,” senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.