Arvind Kejriwal's AAP is in a dilemma over its Rajya Sabha candidate after seven rejections (File)
Highlights
- Rajya Sabha elections for 3 seats from Delhi will be held on January 5
- 7 people declined the opportunity to represent AAP in parliament
- As of now, AAP does not have any representatives in Rajya Sabha
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party is caught in a dilemma over who to send to the Rajya Sabha or upper house of parliament. Elections will be held for three Rajya Sabha seats from Delhi next month and AAP, with its complete domination of the Delhi assembly, can get all three seats. Only, it is short of candidates, with at least seven people the party approached to represent it in Parliament declining.
Nominations for the Rajya Sabha elections begin tomorrow and end on January 5. Elections will be held January 16.
All that is certain so far, AAP sources said, is that the party's senior leader Kumar Vishwas will not be fielded, given his frequent run-ins with party chief Arvind Kejriwal; AAP leaders recently accused Mr Vishwas of an attempted coup to overthrow Mr Kejriwal as party chief.
Kumar Vishwas' supporters staged a four-hour protest this morning at the AAP headquarters in Delhi, camping with quilts and tents, to demand that their leader be picked for parliament.
AAP's Political Affairs Committee will decide on the party's candidates next week, sources said, adding that journalist-turned-politician Ashutosh and Sanjay Singh are being considered for two seats. For the third, there is speculation that Arvind Kejriwal could opt to go to the Rajya Sabha to shift to national politics.
Arvind Kejriwal was keen to field a professional and had made an offer to former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, who RSVPed last month to say that he had "no plans to leave his full-time academic job at the University of Chicago." Former union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and former chief justice of India TS Thakur too have said no. Mr Kejriwal also reportedly contacted Infosys founder NM Narayanamurthy, Nobel Prize winner and activist Kailash Satyarthi and industrialist Sunil Munjal, all of who turned him down.
It is believed that they were not comfortable with AAP's policies and Mr Kejriwal's constant confrontation with the centre.
Delhi has three Rajya Sabha seats. The tenures of the current members, Janardan Dwivedi, Parvez Hashmi and Karan Singh of the Congress end on January 27. The new Rajya Sabha members will be elected by members of the Delhi Assembly, with has 66 AAP legislators and four from the BJP. AAP's overwhelming majority means that it can get the all three seats. For now, it needs candidates.