With the time for withdrawal of nominations for the March 30 Rajya Sabha biennial election in 15 States ending on March 22 in 14 States and on March 23 in Bihar, 55 of the 58 seats have already been filled from 13 States.
The candidates were declared elected unopposed after the deadline for withdrawals was over and election certificates given to them by Returning Officers.
Now the actual poll will be held only in Jharkhand for two seats and for one seat in Uttarakhand between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on March 30 and the counting of votes will be taken up the same evening.
While there are several contestants in Jharkhand, in Uttarakhand the poll is being keenly watched as the ruling Congress enjoys a wafer-thin majority in the Assembly.
Prominent persons elected include Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman K. Rahman Khan, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley, the new Railway Minister Mukul Roy, Science and Technology Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad, Congress spokesman Abishek Singhvi, senior BJP leader Vinay Katiyar, BJP leader-actor Hema Malini (all of them retaining their membership), the former Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Najma Heptullah, actor-politicians Chiranjeevi and Jaya Bachchan, another spokesperson of the Congress Renuka Choudhry, and the former Andhra Pradesh Ministers T. Devender Goud and Nagam Janardhana Reddy.
The poll was to be held for 10 seats from Uttar Pradesh, six each from Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra, five each from Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, four each from Gujarat and Karnataka, three each from Odisha and Rajasthan, two from Jharkhand and one each from Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The election was necessitated by the retirement of 58 RS members on April 2/3.
Meanwhile, Mr. Chiranjeevi met Congress president Sonia Gandhi here and thanked her for offering him the RS seat. He denied that he had sought any post even as there were reports that he is likely to be inducted into the Union Cabinet.
