All the ten candidates, including former Goa Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, who was inducted as Defence Minister in the Modi Cabinet on Sunday, have been declared elected ‘unopposed’ soon after the time for withdrawal of papers for the Rajya Sabha seat expired on Thursday afternoon.
Principal Secretary (Vidhan Sabha), Pradeep Dubey, who was also the Returning Officer, handed certificates to the candidates in this regard, except to Parrikar and SP’s candidate, Ravi Prakash Verma, who did not turn up to collect the papers.While the SP delegation, including senior Cabinet Minister Ambika Chowdhary, was led by Ram Gopal Yadav, the two BSP candidates reached with former Minister and leader of Opposition in the Council, Naseemudeen Siddiqui.
Congress candidate, Pl Punia, who won with the support of the SP, was also accompanied SP candidates to receive his papers.
It may be mentioned that the fate of all the above 10 members was cleared on Tuesday when the candidature of lone independent candidate, who even failed to get his name proposed by any of the MlA, was rejected by the Returning Officer. “A total of 11 nominations were filed, but after scrutiny, the nomination of Qamar Ahmad was rejected as his papers were not in the format,” Returning Officer for Rajya Sabha election, Pradeep Dubey disclosed to the media.
He claimed that the papers of all the other ten candidates were found correct which cleared that they will won the polls ‘unopposed’. The candidates who were declared elected ‘unopposed’ included Ram Gopal Yadav, Tazeen Fatima - wife of Cabinet Minister Azam Khan, Neeraj Shekhar (son of former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar), Ravi Prakash Verma, Javed Ali Khan and Chandrapal Singh Yadav (all SP), Pl Punia (Congress), Raja Ram and Veer Singh (both BSP) and Manohar Parrikar (BJP).
Rajya Sabha members whose terms are expiring are Akhilesh Das, Avtar Singh Karimpuri, Brijlal Khabari, Brijesh Pathak, Raja Ram, Veer Singh (all BSP), Amar Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav (both SP), Kusum Rai (BJP) and Mohammad Adeeb (Congress).