New Delhi: The Congress central leadership has decided to stake its claim to one of the three Rajya Sabha seats opposition parties can jointly win from Bihar . The party has already conveyed its wish to its senior ally RJD with a reminder that the latter had promised Congress a Rajya Sabha seat for the “concessions” it made during the seat allocations in the last Lok Sabha polls.Of the six Rajya Sabha seats falling vacant from Bihar, the ruling JDU-BJP and the opposition front are in a position to win three each, provided there is proper coordination between the opposition parties.While Bihar Congress’ strength of 26 MLAs is short of the minimum 35 votes required to win a Rajya Sabha seat, the party wants RJD (with 82 MLAs and in a position to win two RS seats) to transfer its surplus votes to help Congress win a seat to the Upper House, it is learnt.Congress has many RS aspirants from the state but names of senior leader Tariq Anwar and former MP Nikhil Kumar are among those said to be under the leadership’s consideration. Due to electoral calculations and in-house social balancing requirements, the party may have to nominate a leader from the Muslim or Dalit community for a variety of reasons –– the PCC is now headed by a Brahmin (Madan Mohan Jha), the last Congress nominations from the state to the RS and Legislative Council too went to upper caste leaders (Akhilesh Singh and Prem Chandra Mishra respectively). Further, the way Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM recently made a maiden poll victory in Bihar’s Kishanganj assembly bypoll (vacated by a Congress MLA who got elected to the LS) also alerted the party on the need to safeguard its Muslim base.While RJD may give one of its RS seats to an upper caste leader, whether Lalu-Tejaswi Yadav duo will choose a family member for the second seat or will try to paper the rift within by offering the seat to seniors such as Sharad Yadav remains to be seen.Of the seven vacancies in Maharashtra, the ruling alliance partners Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress can easily get one seat each –– NCP has staked claim for two (one for Pawar himself) — and the alliance can win another seat by polling their surplus votes.While Mukul Wasnik and Rajiv Satav are among the eight Congress’ aspirants, the race is on for the lone Sena seat between Priyanka Chaturvedi and party veterans Chandrakant Khare, Anandrao Adsul, Shivajirao Patil and Anant Geete. Of the three seats BJP+ can win, the party leadership is learnt to have promised one to retiring ally RPI’s Ramdas Athawale and another to former NCP leader Udayanraje Bhosale who lost Satara LS bypoll after crossing over to BJP.