New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday declared 12 candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, including party general secretary K C Venugopal, Deepender Hooda and senior Supreme Court advocate K T S Tulsi.
The Congress named Digvijaya Singh and Phool Singh Baraiya as candidates from Madhya Pradesh where a keen contest would take place in one out of three seats as the BJP has also announced two candidates - Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sumer Singh Solanki.
The Congress and the BJP, given their respective strength in the Assembly, can ensure easy win for their one candidate, while a contest is on cards on the third seat.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi first approved the candidature of nine candidates for the March 26 Rajya Sabha polls, a party statement said.
Apart from Singh and Baraiya from Madhya Pradesh, the Congress named Tulsi and Phulo Devi Netam from Chhattisgarh, Shahzada Anwar from Jharkhand, Rajiv Satav from Maharashtra, Venugopal and Neeraj Dangi from Rajasthan and Kennedy Cornelius Khyriem from Meghalaya.
Later, the party issued another list of three more candidates - Hooda from Haryana, and Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki from Gujarat.
K C Venugopal, a prominent Congress leader from Kerala, was a Member of Parliament in the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha Constituency (2009-2019). He has been appointed as General Secretary of AICC in charge of Karnataka on 29 April 2017 and, later, he was given additional charge of general secretary of organization.
He was the Minister of State for Civil Aviation & Ministry of Power in the 2nd UPA government.
(With PTI inputs)
