Parliamentary debut for Pawan Khera: Congress releases list of candidates of Rajya Sabha polls

COngress leader Pawan Khera is go under to do his Rajya Sabha debut as the company has nominative him on with Mansoor Ali Khan from Karnataka, along with party chief Mallikarjun Kharge.Other names in the list for Rajya Sabha bye-elections include Meenakshi Natarajan from Madhya Pradesh, Neeraj Dangi from Rajasthan, Praveen Chakravarty from Tamil Nadu and Pranav Jha from Jharkhand.The Rajya Sabha polls for 24 seats in 10 states, including Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Manipur, will be held on June 18. Bypoll to the Upper House for one seat each in Maharastra, Tamil Nadu and Odisha will also be conducted the same day. The last date for filing of nominations is June 8.Khera vs BJP leadersKhera is a senior Congress leader and currently serves as the chairman of the party's media and publicity department. While being a vocal opposition leader, Khera was recently in news for his virtual face-off with Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma after he accused his wife of holding foreign assets and passports.Sarma's wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, filed a case in Guwahati on April 5 after Khera alleged that she possessed multiple passports and had undisclosed foreign assets. He also shared some foreign-linked documents, which Sharma later claimed were forged.Both Riniki and CM Sarma rejected the allegations as baseless and politically motivated, and Riniki subsequently lodged a formal complaint with 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 connection with an election), 318 (cheating), 338 (forgery of valuable security or will), 337 (forgery of public record), 340 (using forged documents as genuine), 352 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 356 (defamation), among others.During its probe, Assam Police also visited Khera’s residence in New Delhi on April 7, though he was not present there at the time.Khera initially secured a seven-day transit anticipatory bail from the Telangana High Court on April 10. However, Assam Police challenged that relief before the Supreme Court, which stayed the HC order on April 15.The apex court observed that if Khera approached a competent court in Assam, its earlier interim protection would not prejudice consideration of his plea.Khera later moved the Gauhati High Court seeking anticipatory bail. On April 24, Justice Parthiv Jyoti Saikia rejected the plea after reserving the order following a detailed hearing on April 21.Later, Khera approached the Supreme Court and, on May 1, a bench of Justices JK Maheshwari and AS Chandurkar granted him anticipatory bail while observing that the allegations and counter-allegations in the case appeared, prima facie, to be politically motivated and influenced by political rivalry.The apex court, however, clarified that its observations were limited to deciding the bail plea and should not affect the merits of the investigation or trial.