A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress announced their candidates for the three Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh, political buzz has picked up pace in the State with leaders of the ruling parties hinting at fielding a candidate for the third seat and Congress calling a meeting of its MLAs. On Thursday (June 4) evening, the BJP fielded its national general secretary Tarun Chug and state unit secretary Rajneesh Agrawal for the two seats from the State it is comfortably positioned to win. The Congress also fielded former Lok Sabha MP Meenakshi Natarajan, a confidant of Rahul Gandhi, as the Opposition party has the numbers to secure one seat. The three seats that are going to fall vacant from Madhya Pradesh are currently held by Union Minister George Kurien, BJP MP Sumer Singh Solanki, and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh.In the 230-seat-strong Assembly, the BJP currently has 164 MLAs while the Congress has 64 and one seat is held by the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP). Apart from this, one Congress MLA, Rajendra Bharti of Datia, was disqualified from the State Assembly in April after he was convicted in a fraud case. Each candidate needs 58 first preference votes to secure the seat. As per the numbers, the BJP is poised to win two seats with 48 MLAs to spare. The party will require additional 10 votes to secure the third seat. Whereas the Congress appears to be safely securing one seat to the Parliament’s Upper House, the Opposition party faces fears of cross voting and discontent against Ms. Natarajan which has already started to come to fore. Of the 64, Congress MLA from Vijaypur Mukesh Malhotra has been barred from casting his vote for the Rajya Sabha polls. Mr. Malhotra was convicted by the Madhya Pradesh High Court in an election affidavit case for non-disclosure of criminal cases. While the Supreme Court stayed the order of his disqualification, it barred him from taking part in the RS polling. Another Congress MLA, Nirmala Sapre from Bina, had unofficially joined the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and is currently facing disqualification proceedings in the High Court. This leaves the Opposition party with 62 legal votes in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, for which the polling will be held on June 18. Soon after the name of Ms. Natarajan, who has represented Mandsaur in the Lok Sabha, was announced the Congress called meeting of its legislature party on June 6. However, voices of dissent against Ms. Natarajan’s name have also surfaced with leaders claiming that she “did not have an active connect with MLAs and local leaders”.Naresh Gyanchandani, a leader from Bhopal, took to X and said that the party had “made a mistake” in candidate selection. “Respected Rahul Gandhi ji and Priyanka Gandhi ji, I urge you that there has been a major oversight in the candidate for Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh. I had messaged you several times to thoughtfully decide on the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh because there is a risk of cross-voting here; if Digvijay Singh had been repeated, the seat would have been safe,” he wrote. In another post, he said that in view of the Assembly polls in 2028, the party should have picked a candidate who has “a strong grip on the ground and can win the assembly elections”. “But you are about to make a big mistake,” he wrote. Mr. Singh, however, had earlier said that he was “not seeking” another Rajya Sabha tenure. On Friday (June 5, 2026), while BJP leaders did not disclose if the party was planning on fielding a candidate for the third seat, some leaders hinted that cross voting was possible. State BJP media in-charge Ashish Agarwal took a dig at the Opposition party while saying that “Cross-voting is no longer just a concern; clear signs of it are beginning to appear”.“Internal Opposition to Congress Candidate Begins for Rajya Sabha Elections. Even before the Rajya Sabha elections, discontent within the Congress has started to surface openly. Now, the party’s own leaders and workers are raising questions about decisions made by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi. When it’s not the opponents but one’s own decisions that start being questioned, the signs of defeat become evident on their own,” Mr. Ashish Agarwal said on X, sharing Mr. Gyanchandani’s post. Senior Cabinet Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya also said, “If the party fields a third candidate, we will also make every effort to ensure that candidate’s victory.”Meanwhile, Mr. Chug arrived in Bhopal on Friday evening and is expected to file his nomination along with Mr. Rajneesh Agrawal on Saturday. Mr. Chug, however, said that any decision about field the third candidate will be taken by the party’s national leadership. A Congress MLA from the Gwalior-Chambal region told The Hindu that the fears about cross voting “were genuine” and that the state leadership is aware of the situation. “There is no doubt that Meenakshi Natarajan is a senior leader. She is close to the Gandhi family but here she seems to have lost connect with the stat leaders since she lost Mandsaur [Lok Sabha seat] in 2014. And when the MLAs feel that they cannot approach a senior leader like her directly, they grow impatient and chances of cross voting increase,” the MLA said, requesting anonymity. “Discussions on her name were already going on and the announcement is not surprising. But the state leadership and she now need to reach out to the MLAs as early as possible,” he said, while saying that he had no information if the party was planning on moving its MLAs “someplace safe”.