All the ten candidates, including former Goa chief minister, Manohar Parikar, who was inducted as defence minister by Narendra Modi in his cabinet just on last Sunday, were declared elected `unopposed’ soon after the time for withdrawl of papers for the Rajya Sabha seat expired on Thursday afternoon.
Principal Secretary (Vidhan Sabha), Pradeep Dubey, who was also the returning officer, later also handed certificate to the candidates in this regard, except for Parikar and SP’s candidate, Ravi Prakash Verma, who not turning up to collect the papers. While SP delegation of Rajya Sabha members has been led by Ram Gopal Yadav, and senior cabinet minister, Ambika Chowdhary, also accompanied them, the two Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidates reached along with former minister and leader of Opposition in the Council, Naseemudeen Siddiqui. Congress candidate, Pl Punia, who won with the support of SP also accompanied along with SP candidates to receive his papers. It may be mentioned that the fate of all the above 10 members was cleared on Tuesday itself 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 format and proposers did not include MlAs,” Returning Officer for Rajya Sabha election, Pradeep Dubey disclosed to the media.
He claimed that the papers of all the other ten candidates which included half a dozen of Samajwadi Party, two of Bahujan Samaj Party and one each of Bharatiya Janta Party and Congress, has been 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 Parikar (BJP). Rajya Sabha members whose term is 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).