Bhopal, Raipur: From Madhya Pradesh, senior Congress leader Vivek Tankha, along with BJP's Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, got elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday. In Chhattisgarh, Congress's Rajeev Shukla and Ranjeet Ranjan also got elected unopposed, PTI reported citing official sources.
Tankha entered into his second successive term as Rajya Sabha MP when Valmiki and Patidar debuted. While Patidar hails from an OBC community, while Valmiki is from Dalit. It is viewed that BJP selected their candidates in view of the local body elections and the Assembly elections next year in Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier, Patidar was a member of the state Women's Commission and Valmiki, a corporator of the Jabalpur Municipal Corporation thrice. The latter has also served as an Alderman of the corporation.
Of a total of 11 Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh, the BJP holds eight and the Congress three seats. Union Ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, L Murugan and Dharmendra Pradhan, Ajay Pratap Singh, Kailash Soni and Sumer Singh Solanki. Congress has Digvijaya Singh and Rajmani Patel, along with Tanka, RS MPs.
Out of the five RS seats in Chhattisgarh, terms of two- Chhaya Verma (Congress) and Ramvichar Netam (BJP)- are to expire this month. The remaining three seats are held by Congress's KTS Tulsi and Phulodevi Netam and BJP's Saroj Pandey.
Shukla, a journalist before, is Uttar Pradesh based and was RS MP thrice in the past. Ranjan, however, was a Lok Sabha MP from Bihar before.