Gandhinagar: In the light of leader of opposition Shankersinh Vaghela’s latest moves such as deleting anti-BJP tweets from his verified twitter handle, skipping group photo session with Rahul Gandhi in Delhi and absence in several crucial State Congress meetings and functions, upcoming election of Rajya Sabha in Gujarat could be interesting.

Rajya Sabha election for three seats of Gujarat is likely to be held in early June. Announcement for it has been made by the Election Commission of India officially. Moreover the elections of President and Vice President are also going to take place in next two months.

MLAs are voters in these elections.

Out of three Rajya Sabha seats of Gujarat that are going to witness polling, two are with BJP (Smriti Irani and Dilip Pandya) while one is with Congress (Ahmed Patel).

Looking at the current number in Gujarat assembly, BJP will retain its two seats while Congress will be comfortably able to retain one seat, but that only if just three candidates(two from BJP and one from Congress) file nominations. Suppose if there’s fourth candidate, polling will need to take place. If the fourth candidate is fielded under BJP or Shankersinh’s scheme of things then the election will need to be watched out.

Generally, Gujarat doesn’t witness such moves in Rajya Sabha election and everything goes fairly as per the party strength, but this time Rajya Sabha election is coming just a few months ahead of the general elections of assembly. Added to this the elections for the posts of president and vice president are also going to take place.

BJP has record of fielding extra candidates elsewhere, recently in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

If Shankersinh’s moves are being grossly misinterpreted by media and people for last some time, then everything will take place routinely and Congress will get one seat, but if widely popular perception that Shankersinh and his loyal MLAs are in mood to do something adventurous very soon is correct then polling for third seat will need to be watched out.

If third seat is won by Congress smoothly unopposed or eventually through polling, then Congress will be able to trash all speculations and ‘rumors’ that are being floated on the basis of Shankersinh’s signals at this point which are somewhat harming the party, perception wise.

DeshGujarat