Of the nine MPs – nearly one third of the Congress’s strength – who had quit the Congress in recent times, Sonia will find some alongside her on the Opposition benches and others sitting on the Treasury benches across the aisle.

Among them would be Ashok Chavan, Jyotiraditya Scindia, R P N Singh, Milind Deora and Bhubaneswar Kalita on the BJP-led NDA’s side; and Priyanka Chaturvedi, Mausam Noor, Sushmita Dev and Kapil Sibal on the Opposition benches.

The Congress’s strength in the Upper House would remain the lowest in its history.

The choice of the grand old party’s 10 candidates for the Rajya Sabha show an interesting mix of accommodation of seniors and a visible imprint of the Gandhi family as also Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. There was also an element of pushback from the state leadership as well as honouring of their wishes and caste balancing.

The highlight, of course, was Sonia’s decision to bid farewell to electoral politics just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections and take the Rajya Sabha route to remain in Parliament. Sonia, who is not in the pink of health, has been avoiding public engagements for some time except attending Parliament and the INDIA bloc’s meetings.

Her decision to get elected to the Rajya Sabha from the lone seat the party can win in Rajasthan meant that the state unit will continue to have five of its six MPs from outside, which is not a happy situation for it. Other Congress MPs in the Upper House from the state are Randeep Surjewala, Pramod Tiwari, Mukul Wasnik and K C Venugopal. Only one of its MPs – Neeraj Dangi – is a local face.

The decision to field Abhishek Singhvi from the lone seat in Himachal Pradesh and Ajay Maken from Karnataka is an effort to accommodate the seniors. Apart from being a Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and national spokesperson, Singhvi handles most of the court cases related to the party and the Gandhi family and is indispensable in that sense. Maken is the All India Congress Committee (AICC) treasurer. Their nomination reflects the imprint of the family.

Kharge too had his way in securing a renomination for Syed Nasser Hussain, his close aide. The renomination given to G C Chandrasekhar, a Vokkaliga leader who is in the anti-Siddaramaiah camp and close to Home Minister G Parameshwara, adds another layer. In the choice of the three candidates from the state, the Chief Minister clearly had no say.

In Telangana, the party has brought back its veteran Renuka Chowdhury, who is close to both Gandhis and CM A Revanth Reddy. The second candidate Anil Kumar Yadav, a young leader, is a confidante of Reddy. An OBC leader, he is a former national general secretary of the Youth Congress.

In Madhya Pradesh too, the party has chosen an OBC Yadav candidate – Ashok Singh – in line with Rahul’s OBC push. There were reports that ex-CM Kamal Nath wanted the ticket for himself. Sources said Meenakshi Natarajan, a Rahul camp follower, was in the reckoning till the last minute but there was strong opposition to her candidature from the state leaders, including Nath and Digvijaya Singh.

Ashok Singh is a party veteran affiliated to Nath, who had lost many electoral battles but had been a counter to Scindia when the latter had been in the Congress as both hail from the Gwalior region. He is the state Congress treasurer. While the party central leadership was not keen to give a Rajya Sabha berth to Nath, it accommodated his wish in the case of Singh.

The Congress’s move to nominate Dalit leader Chandrakant Handore from Maharashtra is also a bit of caste balancing. It is an attempt to reach out to the Dalit community besides making amends for a past fiasco. In 2022, Handore was the party’s first candidate for the state’s MLC elections. Despite being short of numbers on its own to get a second candidate elected, the Congress fielded Bhai Jagtap hoping to ensure his win with the help of its MVA allies. But in an anti-climax, Jagtap won and Handore – the first-choice candidate – lost due to cross-voting. The party is now making amends by bringing him to the Rajya Sabha.

The Congress’s candidate in Bihar – state party president Akhilesh Prasad Singh – is an obvious choice. He belongs to the upper caste Bhumihar community.