Capitalising on cross-voting, the BJP won nine of the ten Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh, with its ninth candidate Anil Kumar Agarwal scoring a tantalising win over his BSP rival Bhimrao Ambedkar.
In addition to Agarwal, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Anil Jain, GVl Narasimha Rao, Vijay Pal Tomar, Kanta Kardam, Ashok Bajpai, Harnath Yadav, Sakaldeep Rajbhar are the BJP leaders elected from the State.
The SP’s Jaya Bachchan joined them as the one Opposition candidate. There were 11 candidates for 10 Rajya Sabha seats and 37 first preference votes required for victory in each seat in UP.
While eight BJP nominees won with 39 votes each, first time contestant Anil won the ninth seat with support from independent and rebel MlAs. Anil got only 22 first preference votes against 34 by the BR Ambedkare — the BSP candidate. Anil was declared elected on the basis of the second preference votes.
The BJP, however, suffered setback as two MlAs of the Suheldeo Bhartiya Samaj party, a BJP ally cross-voted for the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Earlier, counting of votes was delayed for two hours following complaints filed by the SP and the BSP with the Election Commission. BSP leader lalji Verma complained that party MlA Anil Singh cast his vote without showing the ballot to the party’s polling agent. The SP lodged a similar complaint against Nitin Agarwal who voted for the BJP.
The EC summoned the video footage of polling and after examining it, the complaint was rejected. One MlA each of the SP and the BSP had cross-voted for the BJP.
Elections for 25 RS seats from six States — Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana — were held on Friday. For the 58 Rajya Sabha seats to be filled, 33 candidates from 10 States were declared elected unopposed on March 15.
Since the BJP and its allies have 324 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, the saffron party could have easily bagged eight of the 10 seats and was still be left with 28 surplus votes as the four-MlA strong Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) decided to go with the ruling party.
Meanwhile, Telangana’s ruling party, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), managed to win all the three seats from the State electing its candidate — B Prakash, J Santosh Kumar and AB lingaiah Yadav .
TDP leader CM Ramesh was unanimously elected to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh. As expected the Congress won three seats in Karnataka and a fourth one went to the BJP.
For the Congress’s Dr l Hanumanthaiah, Dr Syed Naseer Hussain, and GC Chandrasekhar booked their RS berth while BJP’s Rajeev Chandrashekar was relected to RS.
BJP national general secretary Saroj Pandey won the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Chhattisgarh. She defeated Congress rival lekhram Sahu. Pandey polled 51 votes, while Sahu secured 36 votes in the election held at the State Assembly complex, wherein 87 of the 90 State legislators cast their votes, State Assembly secretary Chandra Shekhar Gangrade, who is also the returning officer. The House currently has 49 BJP MlAs, 39 Congress legislators.
The Trinamool Congress on Friday won four Rajya Sabha seats leaving the fifth seat for the Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi who also won with the support of the remaining Trinamool votes, thanks to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who exploited the Friday’s Upper House elections not only to draw the Janpath nearer by backing its candidate and also managed to drive a wedge between the left and the Pradesh Congress.
The two parties had for the past seven years been jointly fighting against what they called despotic and oppressive Mamata Banerjee regime.
left candidate Rabin Dev of the CPI(M) who was contesting “as a matter of policy” got 30 votes while Singhvi got 47 votes. Three votes from the Trinamool due to fall in his kitty were cancelled, sources said adding the party had started a probe to find out whether BJP had a hand in it.
The four MPs from the Trinamool Congress who would now go to Rajya Sabha are Nadimul Haq, Subhashis Chakrabarty, Abir Biswas and Shantanu Sen. Singhvi got the 33 votes from the Congress and 14 valid votes from the Trinamool. “It is humbling and uplifting,” he said after winning adding “it is a result of cooperation between different political groups and MlAs.
From Kerala, MP Veerendra Kumar, State president of the Janata Dal-United (Sharad Pawar faction) was elected to the Rajya Sabha . Backed by the CPI (M)-led ruling lDF, Veerendra Kumar defeated D Babu Prasad, nominee of the Congress-led Opposition UDF, by a margin of 49 votes.
The 140-member Kerala Assembly presently has 139 MlAs after the death of CPI(M)’s Chengannur MlA KK Ramachandran Nair and Veerendra Kumar polled 89 votes while the number of votes required for victory was 71. One vote of the lDF-supported candidate was declared invalid. The lDF presently has 90 members in the House.
The BJP has fielded Sameer Uranv and Pradeep Kumar Sonthalia, while the Congress has nominated Dheeraj Sahu.
In the house of 80 members, the ruling BJP has 43 MlAs and its ally AJSU 4. Opposition Congress has 7 members, JMM 18, JVM(P) 2, BSP 1, MCC 1, CPIMl(l) 1 and Independents 3.