The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged 12 of the 25 Rajya Sabha seats across six States for which biennial elections were held on Friday, along with a bypoll in one State.
In all, 33 candidates from 10 States were earlier declared elected unopposed.
At the time of filing of the report, the counting process for one seat had not been concluded in Uttar Pradesh. However, the BJP claimed victory in all the nine seats it had contested.
Two-hour delay
In all, the Congress won five seats, while the Trinamool Congress got four, the TRS three and the LDF and the Samajwadi Party (Jaya Bachchan) one each. On completion of voting, counting in Uttar Pradesh for 10 seats started after about a two-hour delay, following allegations by the Samajwadi Party and the BSP that two MLAs had cross-voted.
BSP’s Anil Kumar Singh had told the media that he was with “Maharaj-ji (Yogi Adityanath).” While the result for one seat had not been declared officially, eight seats went to the BJP and one SP candidate was declared winner.
Significant win
The BJP’s win in Uttar Pradesh assumes significance as it comes on the heels of its by-poll loss to the SP backed by the BSP.
The BJP had enough MLAs to send eight candidates to the Upper House, but has now been able to send its ninth candidate as well, allegedly through cross-voting in its favour.
In West Bengal, all four Trinamool candidates — sitting Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque and first time nominees Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santanu Sen — were declared elected. TMC-backed Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi also won.
BJP’s Sandeep Oraon and Congress candidate Dheeraj Sahu claimed victory in Jharkhand, where the Congress and the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik (JVM-P) had alleged that an MLA did not show his ballot to the party representative. But, the EC rejected the complaint after examining the video footage.
Congress candidates Dr. L. Hanumanthaiah, Dr. Syed Naseer Hussain and G.S. Chandrashekar were declared winners, while the BJP-backed Rajeev Chandrasekhar also was elected in Karnataka.
TRS bags three
In Telangana, the ruling TRS bagged all the three seats, with its candidates B. Prakash, J. Santosh Kumar and AB. Lingaiah Yadav being declared winners. C.M. Ramesh and Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar of the Telugu Desam Party and Vemireddy Prabhakar Reddy of the YSR Congress were earlier elected unanimously.
BJP national general secretary Saroj Pandey won the lone Rajya Sabha seat in Chhattisgarh, by defeating Congress rival Lekhram Sahu. The CPI(M)-led and Left Democratic Front-backed independent candidate M. P. Veerendra Kumar won in Kerala.
Arun Jaitley, Anil Jain, GVL Narasimha Rao, Vijay Pal Tomar, Kanta Kardam, Ashok Bajpai, Harnath Yadav and Sakaldeep Rajbhar of the BJP were elected though the EC was yet to release the final tally. The BJP’s ninth candidate Anil Agarwal, won on second preference votes, at the cost of BSP nominee Bhimrao Ambedkar. U.P. CM Yogi Adityanath mocked the SP for failing to see the BSP candidate through.
