The Bharatiya Janata Party made significant gains in the Rajya Sabha by winning 12 seats yesterday, thus marginally narrowing the gap with the opposition Congress in the upper house of parliament where the ruling party is in a minority.
At the end of the voting for 27 Rajya Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka, the Congress won six, the Samajwadi Party seven and the Bahujan Samaj Party two.
A total of 58 Rajya Sabha seats from 16 states were vacant for the last two months. Thirty candidates were elected unopposed last month.
The BJP made a clean sweep in Rajasthan where all its four candidates, including federal Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and senior leader Om Prakash Mathur, were elected. Harshvardhan Singh and Ramkumar Verma were the other two BJP winners.
The BJP clinched both seats - federal minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Mahesh Podaar - in Jharkhand amid allegations of cross-voting that helped it to defeat a supposedly united opposition in the state.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP won two seats and the Congress one. The BJP winners were former journalist M J Akbar and Anil Madhav Dave. The Congress candidate was Vivek Tankha
Federal minister Birender Singh won comfortably in Haryana.
But the surprise victory in the state was BJP-backed media baron Subhash Chandra. Thirteen votes of Congress legislators were rejected, handing over the victory to Chandra. He defeated Delhi-based lawyer and Congress and INLD-supported candidate R K Anand.
There was high drama in the assembly complex and counting of votes was delayed for over two hours following objections raised by various parties.
INLD leader Abhay Chautala accused Congress legislators of getting their votes rejected.
But Congress legislator Karan Singh Dalal blamed the INLD for Anand’s defeat.
“No votes of the Congress were rejected. You can check from the assembly records. INLD legislators got their votes rejected after Anand expressed faith in the Congress leadership,” Dalal alleged.
He said only Congress legislator and spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala’s vote was rejected.
His vote was cancelled following an objection by BJP leader Gian Chand Gupta. Surjewala allegedly showed his vote to another party leader, Kiran Chaudhary.
In Karnataka, federal minister Nirmala Sitharaman won for the BJP while the state’s ruling Congress got three seats. The Congress winners were its stalwarts Oscar Fernandes, Jairam Ramesh and K C Ramamurthy.
In Uttar Pradesh, all seven candidates of the ruling Samajwadi Party won easily. The winners included two Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidates while one seat each went to the BJP and the Congress.
The victorious candidates include Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Sanjay Seth, Reoti Raman Singh, Sukhram Yadav, Surender Nagar and Vishambhar Prasad Nishad of the SP. Satish Mishra and Ashok Siddhartha won for the BSP while Shiv Pratap Shukla won on the BJP ticket. Kapil Sibal was the sole Congress winner.
In Uttarakhand, Congress candidate Pradeep Tamta was declared elected for the lone Rajya Sabha seat despite strong differences of opinion within the party over his candidature.
Meanwhile the Congress accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of using money and muscle power to subvert the elections.
“The Modi government has used money and muscle power during the Rajya Sabha elections - just as they did to throttle democracy in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh,” party spokesman R P N Singh said at a press conference.
The Congress reaction came after three of its legislators were stopped from casting their votes in Jharkhand.
“Arrest warrants were issued against three of the Congress MLAs in Jharkhand and two of them were stopped from casting their vote,” Singh said.
“The timing of issuing the warrant is important,” Singh said, accusing the BJP of misusing its power to win the elections.
Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is seen with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidates M Venkaiah Naidu, Om Prakash Mathur, Ramkumar Verma and Harshvardhan Singh Dungarpur after they victory in the Rajya Sabha elections, in Jaipur yesterday.
