New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha elections saw 41 candidates getting elected without any opposition on Tuesday, including former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, BJP president J P Nadda, Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan, and BJP’s new entrant Ashok Chavan. The remaining 15 seats in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will go to polls on February 27. The BJP emerged as the biggest winner, securing 20 seats, followed by the Congress (6), Trinamool Congress (4), YSR Congress (3), RJD (2), BJD (2) and NCP, Shiv Sena, BRS and JD(U) one each. The returning officers declared these 41 candidates as winners on the last date of withdrawal of nominations, as there were no other contenders for these seats.
The biennial elections were scheduled for February 27 in 56 seats. Out of these, 50 members will retire on April 2 and six on April 3. The voting for 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh, four in Karnataka and one in Himachal Pradesh will take place from 9 am to 4 pm and the counting will start from 5 pm on the same day.
Nadda and his party colleagues Jasvantsinh Parmar, Mayank Nayak and diamond tycoon Govindbhai Dholakia won from Gujarat. The Congress, which has only 15 MLAs, and other opposition parties did not field any candidates against the BJP, which has 156 legislators in the 182-member Gujarat assembly.
Sonia Gandhi was among the three candidates who won from Rajasthan, along with BJP’s Chunnilal Garasiya and Madan Rathore.
Maharashtra also saw six candidates getting elected unopposed – BJP’s Chavan, who switched from the Congress last Tuesday, Medha Kulkarni and Ajit Gopchhade; Shiv Sena’s Milind Deora, who quit the Congress last month, Praful Patel (NCP) and Chandrakant Handore (Cong).
In Bihar, JD(U)’s Sanjay Kumar Jha, BJP’s Dharmshila Gupta and Bhim Singh, Manoj Kumar Jha and Sanjay Yadav (both RJD) and Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Congress) were the winners.
Uttar Pradesh will have a contest for 10 seats among 11 candidates. The BJP has nominated eight candidates – former Union minister R P N Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, state party general secretary Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant, party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh, former Agra mayor Naveen Jain and local industrialist and ex-SP leader Sanjay Seth who joined the BJP in 2019.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) has renominated Jaya Bachchan and also named former MP Ramjilal Suman and retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan as its candidates.
In Karnataka, four seats will see a fight among five candidates. The Congress has put up Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrasekhar, while Narayansa Bandage is the BJP candidate. JD(S) leader and ex-Rajya Sabha member D Kupendra Reddy is also in the fray.
In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has forced a contest by fielding Harsh Mahajan against Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi for the lone seat despite lacking enough MLAs to win.
In the evening, TMC’s Sushmita Dev, Sagarika Ghose, Mamata Thakur and Md Nadimul Haque and Samik Bhattacharya (BJP) were the winners from West Bengal.
Union minister Murugan, Valmiki Dham Ashram head Umesh Nath Maharaj, Kisan Morcha’s national vice president Banshilal Gurjar, and Madhya Pradesh BJP’s women wing president Maya Naroliya secured four seats for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh while Ashok Singh of the Congress also won without any opposition.
From Odisha, Union minister Vaishnaw (BJP) and BJD’s Debashish Samantray and Subhashish Khuntia were the winners.
The YSR Congress bagged all the three seats in Andhra Pradesh – G Babu Rao, Y V Subba Reddy and M Raghunath Reddy while in neighbouring Telangana, the ruling Congress won two seats – Renuka Chowdhury and Anil Kumar Yadav – and BRS one seat – V Ravichandra.
BJP nominees in Uttarakhand (Mahendra Bhatt), Subhash Barala (Haryana), Devendra Pratap Singh (Chhattisgarh) won without any contest.