BJP Wins 8 Out of 16 Seats in High-Stakes Rajya Sabha Polls, Congress Sweeps Rajasthan

GG News Bureau

Jaipur/Chandigarh/Mumbai/Bengaluru, 11^th June. The high-stakes Rajya Sabha polls in four states (Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan and Karnataka) on Friday turned out to be a nail-biting battle. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secured win in three states while the Congress swept Rajasthan.

Voting took place for 16 vacant seats in Rajya Sabha in Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra on June 10. The counting of votes was delayed for several houses in Haryana and Maharashtra with anti-parties trading charges.

Rajasthan

In a major morale boost to the Congress party following the dismal performance in the recently-concluded Assembly polls in five states, the party grabbed all three Rajya Sabha seats in the polls amid allegations of horse-trading, while the Bharatiya Janata Party got one seat.

Congress had fielded Mukul Wasnik, Randeep Surjewala, and Pramod Tiwari while Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ghanshyam Tiwari and media baron Subhash Chandra as independent candidates were in the fray for four vacant RS seats. Mentioning fears of cross-voting, the Congress had gathered its MLAs in a resort in Udaipur.

“This is the win of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Gehlot government… This is the defeat of those powers who wanted to buy Rajasthan’s self-respect in vote market, destabilize elected state government, run a bulldozer on democracy… Money and muscle power, income tax, ED, black money lost,” said Randeep Surjewala after the poll win.

Explaining the mathematics in the polls, Congress leader Raghu Sharma said, “All 126 votes of Congress have gone to Congress. BJP wanted to indulge in horse trading but nothing could happen. BJP had 71 votes and RLP had 3. But they did not even get 74 full votes, but got 73. This shows BJP is broken, cross-voting happened at their end.”

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot accused that the Bharatiya Janata Party attempted to indulge in horse-trading but it did not succeed.

“As I had said, we will win all 3 seats. Everyone knew Congress had full votes and BJP did not. Then why did they even nominate candidates? This means they wanted to indulge in horse-trading which could not happen here,” Gehlot said.

Maharashtra

In Maharashtra, Bharatiya Janata Party was certain to get two seats but the party managed to bag a third seat as well with the help of Independents.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal, former state minister Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mahadik from the BJP won while one candidate each from Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) won.

285 votes were balloted on Friday and 41 were needed to win one Rajya Sabha seat.

Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut, NCP’s Praful Patel and Congress’s Imran Pratapgarhi were elected without any difficulty. However, all eyes were on the battle for the sixth seat where the Bharatiya Janata Party had fielded Dhananjay Mahadik and Sanjay Pawar was in fray as the Shiv Sena candidate.

Dhananjay Mahadik’s win came as a major jolt for Shiv Sena which was expecting to get two seats in the Rajya Sabha polls.

Commenting on the election results, NCP chief Sharad Pawar said that he was not surprised with the results. “The result doesn’t surprise me. Congress, Shiv Sena, NCP have been voted as per the quota, except (NCP’s) Praful Patel who has received an extra vote – that vote is not from MVA, it’s from the other side. We had fewer votes for the sixth seat but Shiv Sena fielded its candidate and tried to make him win. BJP had the support of many independents MLAs and we had only a few.”

“Devendra Fadnavis’ attempts to take Independents with BJP were successful. This result will not have any effect on the stability of our government.”

Before the voting day, the AIMIM had extended support to Maha Vikas Aghadi and said that its two MLAs in Maharashtra will vote for Congress candidate Imran Pratapgarhi with an aim to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The counting of votes started after 1 am on Saturday following the order of the EC. The counting could not begin at its scheduled time on Friday after the BJP approached the Election Commission alleging rules violation by three MLAs of Maha Vikas Aghadi.

On the other hand, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) had challenged the vote of one BJP MLA.

After the counting, Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut alleged that the Election Commission (EC) favoured the BJP. “Election Commission made our one vote invalid. We objected to two votes but no action was taken on that. Election Commission favoured them (BJP),” he said.

Karnataka

Bharatiya Janata Party won three seats in Rajya Sabha, Congress bagged one seat while the Janata Dal-Secular drew a blank after the results of polls to the Upper House of Parliament were announced on Friday. Six candidates were in the fray for four Rajya Sabha seats from Karnataka.

All three BJP candidates, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, actor-turned-politician Jaggesh and Member of Legislative Council Lehar Singh Siroya and Congress leader Jairam Ramesh won the elections.

JD-S’ Kupendra Reddy and Congress candidate Mansoor Ali Khan faced defeat.

Janata Dal (Secular) chief HD Kumaraswamy on Friday alleged “horse-trading” in the Karnataka Rajya Sabha polls claiming that Congress leader Siddaramaiah was forcing JDS MLAs to not vote for their own party but that of the candidate of the grand old party. JD(S) MLA K Srinivasa Gowda admitted that he voted in favour of Congress.

Haryana

In Haryana, Bharatiya Janata Party achieved a comfortable win grabbing one of the two seats. BJP’s Krishan Lal Panwar won after 31 votes were polled in his favour.

The interesting contest was between Congress party’s Ajay Maken and BJP-supported independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma. However, Ajay Maken lost the Rajya Sabha polls to Kartikeya Sharma by a narrow margin.

Voting was held on June 10 to elect two members to the Upper House of Parliament from Haryana.

Amid allegations of cross-voting and rule violations, the counting of votes was postponed and there was a recounting of votes that went on past midnight.

Out of 90 MLAs in the Haryana Legislative Assembly, independent candidate Balraj Kundu abstained and a vote, apparently of Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi, was rejected leaving 88 votes valid.

Kartikeya Sharma, who was supported by the BJP and its ally Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), got 29.6 votes while Maken received 29 votes.