New Delhi, June 16: S.M. Krishna has been nominated as the Congress’s candidate for the Rajya Sabha.

The former Karnataka chief minister, credited with turning Bangalore into India’s Silicon Valley, is likely to get elected without a hitch as the Congress has the 45 votes he needs.

However, the party’s 80 MLAs aren’t enough to see a second candidate through, left as it is with only 35 votes. It needs another 10. The Janata Dal (Secular), with its 28 MLAs, has agreed to make up the shortfall after the two parties settled on a “mutually acceptable” nominee.

The candidate is Anil Lad, finalised after a week of bargaining between Congress leaders and Dal (Secular) chief H.D. Deve Gowda.

Lad’s selection caused considerable heartburn in the Karnataka Congress. He was a BJP MLA until he crossed over to the Congress just before the recent elections.

Lad, who owns mines in Bellary, was rewarded with a ticket because the Congress believed he alone could take on Gali Somasekhar Reddy, who is the BJP’s mining tycoon. But the calculations went awry. Lad lost.

After the defeat, the Congress evolved a “principle” not to give Rajya Sabha and legislative council seats to losers. Today, with Lad’s nomination, that “principle” lay in tatters. “Because of Gowda’s pressure, we flouted our own guidelines,” a Congress leader said.

Gowda was unhappy with Krishna’s name because he saw him as a “rival” power centre in the Vokkaliga community, to which both belong. But the Congress made it clear its choice for the only clear seat it had was non-negotiable.

Some Congress leaders feel that if Krishna had been projected as the party’s chief ministerial candidate, the Vokkaligas — at least a large section of them — might have left Gowda. The perception was that Krishna had been brought back to Bangalore from Mumbai’s Raj Bhavan a couple of months before the elections to fulfil a “big mandate”.

But apart from heading the co-ordination committee, Krishna had little else to do. He campaigned virtually solo as most Congress workers saw leaders like Mallikarjuna Kharge and Siddharamaiah as the “real” power centres.

Sources said Krishna might be compensated for the short shrift given to him with a place in the Congress Working Committee and a “substantial” role in Karnataka in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections next year.

To repay the Dal (Secular) for supporting Lad, the Congress has dropped its claim to one of the two seats it would have secured in the legislative council and backed Gowda’s candidate.