Congress leader Pawan Khera is set to make his first appearance in the Rajya Sabha as the party has nominated him along with Karnataka’s Mansoor Ali Khan, along with party president Mallikarjun Kharge.
Other names in the Rajya Sabha by-election list include Meenakshi Natarajan from Madhya Pradesh, Neeraj Dhange from Rajasthan, Praveen Chakravarty from Tamil Nadu and Pranav Jha from Jharkhand.
Rajya Sabha elections to 24 seats in 10 states, including Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Manipur, will be held on June 18. Lok Sabha elections for one seat each in Maharastra, Tamil Nadu and Odisha will also be held on the same day. The deadline for submitting nominations is June 8.
Khera against the BJP leaders
Khera is a senior Congress leader and is currently the head of the party’s media and publicity department. While Khera has been an outspoken opposition leader, he was recently in the news for his virtual confrontation with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, after he accused his wife of possessing foreign assets and passports.
Sarma’s wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, filed the case in Guwahati on April 5 after Khaira alleged that she possesses multiple passports and has undisclosed foreign assets. He also shared some documents related to foreigners, which Sharma later claimed were forged.
Both Reneke and CM Sarma dismissed the allegations as baseless and politically motivated, and Reneke subsequently filed a formal complaint with the Assam Police in Guwahati.
Based on the complaint, the Guwahati Crime Branch registered a case under multiple provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including Sections 175 (false statement in relation to elections), 318 (cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable collateral or will), 337 (forgery of public record), 340 (using forged documents as genuine), 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 356 (defamation), among others. Other matters.
During the investigation, Assam Police also visited Khera’s residence in New Delhi on April 7, though he was not present there at that time.
Khera was initially granted anticipatory bail for seven days from the Telangana High Court on April 10. However, the Assam Police challenged this exemption in the Supreme Court, which stayed the SC order on April 15.
The Supreme Court observed that if Khaira approached a competent court in Assam, his earlier interim protection would not affect the consideration of his petition.
Khera later moved the Guwahati High Court seeking anticipatory bail. On April 24, Justice Parthiv Jyoti Saikia dismissed the petition after reserving the order after a detailed hearing on April 21.
Later, Khera approached the Supreme Court, and on May 1, a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and AS Chandorkar granted him anticipatory bail observing that the allegations and counter-allegations in the case appear, prima facie, to be politically motivated and influenced by political rivalry.
However, the Supreme Court made it clear that its observations were limited to the determination of the bail application and should not affect the merits of the investigation or trial.
