Thiruvananthapuram, June 18 (IANS): Kerala Congress-Mani chief Jose K. Mani, CPI's P.P. Suneer, and IUML candidate and Delhi-based lawyer Haris Beran were on Tuesday elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Kerala.
The three vacancies arose after Mani, CPI state Secretary Binoy Viswan and CPI-M veteran Elamaram Kareem’s terms were ending soon.
Given its strength in the 140-member Kerala Assembly, the ruling Left Democratic Front was able to get two of its nominees elected while the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front got one.
Incidentally, even as Mani was a member of the upper house of the Parliament, his party left the UDF and became a full-fledged member of the Left just before the 2021 Assembly polls. With one seat already allotted to the CPI, the CPI-M, due to political compulsions, "gifted" the second seat to Mani's party, which was demanding it for its leader, making it the first time that the CPI-M had allotted a seat to a junior ally.
Suneer had unsuccessfully contested against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the Wayanad Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 polls.