like the Rajya Sabha (RS) biennial election to the five seats from Bihar, all the seven candidates for an equal number of vacant seats for the legislative Council will be elected unopposed.
Till the last date of filing nominations, only seven candidates, two each of RJD, JD(U) and BJP and one from Congress filed their nomination papers. RJD supremo lalu Prasad kept the suspense till the end, since he had announced to field the third candidate. However, he had a second thought and decided to be satisfied with only two. The BJP which had earlier announced only one name Arjun Sahni for the legislative Council later on announced the name of former MlA Vinod Narayan Jha.
On Tuesday, both Sahni and Jha, apart from the BJP's RS candidate Gopal Narayan Singh filed their papers in the Assembly Secretariat.
All the RS and legislative Council candidates of the grand alliance had submitted their papers on Monday. They were Ram Jethmalani and Misa Bharti (both RJD), Sharad Yadav and RCP Singh (both JD(U).
JD(U) council candidates Ghulam Rasool Baliavi and CP Sinha, RJD's Qamar Alam and Ranvijay Singh and Tanveer Akhtar of the Congress had also filed their nominations on Monday. There had been speculations that lalu might field State party president Ram Chandra Purbe as the third candidate.
The BJP, however, heaved a sigh of relief on Tuesday when no eighth candidate came up for the legislative Council elections. Practically, it would have been easier for the BJP to get its candidates through on the basis of the numerical strength of the NDA in the Assembly, which is 58 with 53 members of the BJP.
The party then needed only four additional votes which it was hopeful to get through four Independent MlAs. But the RJD would have to struggle hard to manage 13 additional votes even when the JD(U) has nine surplus votes. However, the JD(U) has to allocate four votes to the Congress candidate too, since the party has only 27 MlAs, four less than the required number to win a legislative Council seat.