Mumbai, Feb 15 (IANS): A total of six candidates, including five from the ruling MahaYuti alliance, and one of the Opposition Congress filed their nomination papers for the upcoming Rajya Sabha biennial elections here on Thursday.

They are: Ashok S. Chavan, Dr. Medha Kulkarni and Dr. Ajit Gopchhade (Bharatiya Janata Party), Praful M. Patel (Nationalist Congress Party) and Milind M. Deora (Shiv Sena), all belonging to the ruling MahaYuti.

The Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi’s lone Congress candidate and Dalit leader Chandrakant D. Handore also submitted his nomination papers.

With the BJP state President Chandrashekhar Bawankule’s announcement, the election to the six seats is likely to be unopposed, though last-minute surprises are not ruled out in political circles.

Thursday is the last date for filing nominations and if necessary, polling will be held on February 27.

The elections will be held to fill up six seats that fell vacant due to the retirement of: Union MSME Minister Narayan Rane, ex-Union Minister Prakash Javadekar and V. Muraleedharan (BJP); journalist Kumar Ketkar (Congress); Anil Desai (Shiv Sena-UBT) and Vandana Chavan (NCP-SP) -- none of whom were re-nominated for various reasons by their respective parties.

Of the six who filed their nominations on Thursday, two are former Congress leaders -- ex-Chief Minister Chavan, and ex-Union Minister Deora, while former Union Minister Patel (NCP) is a sitting RS MP, but is contesting owing to certain technicalities in the wake of the ongoing disqualification proceedings case.

Kulkarni, the sole woman candidate, is a former MLA from Pune and Dr. Gopchhade is an RSS Pracharak and currently state party vice-president.

Handore is a respected Dalit leader from the state who was defeated in June 2022 biennial elections for the Maharashtra Legislative Council amid cross-voting after the BJP put up an extra candidate.

His defeat was followed by a revolt against the MVA by the current CM, Eknath Shinde which led to the toppling of the then CM, Uddhav Thackeray.

Among the retirees, Rane is likely to be fielded for the Lok Sabha elections from Ratnagiri-Sindhudurg to wrest the seat from the SS-UBT strongman Vinayak Raut, while Javadekar and Muraleedharan were dropped.

The Maharashtra electoral college comprises the 288 MLAs of which the current strength is 284, and each candidate needs 41 ‘first preference votes’ to sail through.

Presently, all the parties have sufficient quotas in their kitty to ensure an uncontested win for the six candidates.