With an aim to ensure victory of Congress nominee Vivek Tankha from Madhya Pradesh in the biennial polls to the Rajya Sabha, lunch and dinner diplomacy besides one-to-one contact with the party legislators is in full swing here.
The polling for the biennial polls will be held tomorrow at Vidhan Sabha. Senior Congress leaders and former Union Ministers Kamal Nath and Sushil Kumar Shinde are camping in the State Capital to ensure the victory of Tankha, who is short of just one vote to sail through in the polls.
A lunch was on at the posh hotel in the city where Congress MlAs were present. Besides four BSP legislators also took part in it.
Soon after the arrival of Nath last evening here, he interacted with all the MlAs one-to-one at the State Congress office and also took part in the dinner at the party headquarters. Nath also hosted a dinner for Congress and other legislators at his official residence here at Shyamla Hills area.
"Everything is going on perfectly and as planned. Mock polling will also be conducted so that legislators will not commit any error in exercising their franchise in the crucial elections," State Congress President, Arun Yadav said.
The Congress camp which is short of just one vote is confident of the victory of Tankha as Bahujan Samaj Party has already issued a whip to its four MlAs to vote in favour of him. The Assembly has a total strength of 230 MlAs. The BJP had 166 members followed by Congress 57, BSP 4 and Independents 3.
However, with the death of BJP's Nepanagar MlA Rajendra Dadu on Thursday and the Supreme Court's decision barring another saffron party MlA Rajendra Meshram from voting, the party has 164 votes in its kitty now.
Principal Secretary of State Assembly Bhagwandev Israni on Friday said that arrangements for Rajya Sabha elections for three vacant seats from Madhya Pradesh have been completed.
On June 29, the tenure of three Rajya Sabha members Anil Madhav Dave, Chandan Mitra of BJP and Vijay laxmi Sadho of Congress would end and on these three seats four candidates - Anil Madhav Dave and Mubbashir Javed Akbar from BJP and Vivek Krishna Tankha from Congress and an independent candidate Vinod - are in the fray.
The elections would be held from 9 am to 4 pm at the State Assembly and all the elected 228 members of the State Assembly would vote.