Taking a dig at his party over the selection of Rajya Sabha candidates, Congress MP Manish Tewari said that the Upper House had become a parking lot.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Tewari argued that the Rajya Sabha had stopped discharging its responsibility as envisioned by the Constitution many decades ago.
He also called for a serious deliberation on whether the Rajya Sabha should be abolished in the present scenario.
"In my personal opinion, Rajya Sabha has stopped carrying out the functions for which it was constituted. Rajya Sabha has now become a parking lot. It needs to be examined whether or not the country needs Rajya Sabha now," he said to ANI.
On Sunday, the Congress party announced the names of 10 candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections in which the names of many prominent leaders are missing. In such a situation, voices of dissatisfaction are rising in the party.
Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari have been made candidates from Rajasthan. All these three candidates do not belong to Rajasthan. Congress MLA from Sirohi in Rajasthan, Sanyam Lodha has raised the question and said that the party will have to explain why no one was nominated from Rajasthan. "The Congress party should tell what is the reason for not making any Congress leader/worker from Rajasthan a candidate in the Rajya Sabha elections?" he wrote in a tweet on Sunday.
Pawan Kheda, who hails from Rajasthan, was a contender for Rajya Sabha in Congress. But his name is also not included in the list. After the release of the list, he tweeted, "Maybe there is something missing in my penance."
The Congress on Sunday opted for apparently lightweight candidates like Imran Pratapgarhi and Ranjeet Ranjan for the Rajya Sabha polls, contrary to speculation about accommodating veterans Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma. Pratapgarhi, the party's minority department chairperson and a poet from Uttar Pradesh, has been fielded from Maharashtra.
In reaction, Congress leader Nagma wrote on Twitter, "Our 18 years of penance also fell short in front of Imran Bhai."
Meanwhile, Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia has also taken a jibe at the Congress party. He tweeted in Hindi and wrote, "Congress's Chintan Shivir took place in Rajasthan. Now look at another achievement of this thinking. Observe the quota of local candidates....without 'local' who will be 'vocal'..?"
The Congress party on Sunday announced the names of candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls fielding Rajeev Shukla, Ajay Maken, and Jairam Ramesh from Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Karnataka respectively.
The party released the list of 10 candidates from seven states for the polls scheduled to take place on June 10.
P Chidambaram, who is an MP in the Rajya Sabha, has once again been given a run from Tamil Nadu, while Ranjeet Ranjan has been fielded from Chhattisgarh. The party has fielded Vivek Tankha as a candidate from Madhya Pradesh.
Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi has approved them as the Congress candidates to contest the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha from the states, a statement read duly signed by General Secretary Mukul Wasnik. Elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats spread across 15 states will take place on June 10.
( With inputs from ANI )
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