Six rebel Congress MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh Assembly, who were disqualified from Congress after defying the party during Rajya Sabha polls joined BJP in Delhi on March 23. The MLAs are Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma, and Devinder Kumar Bhutto. While speaking to the media after joining the BJP, former Congress MLAs attacked the state government and said it's on the ventilator and the Himachal govt will collapse. Newly joined BJP leader Inder Dutt Lakhanpal said the functionality of INC has broken while Davinder Kumar Bhutto said the Himachal govt will collapse and Rajinder Rana said the Himachal government is on the ventilator. “The functionality of the INC has been broken. Neither is there any influence of the High Command nor is there any respect left for the party workers… They nominated that person for the Rajya Sabha from Himachal, who is known to have fought against the rights of our state in the SC,” said BJP leader Inder Dutt Lakhanpal.
Tag: Rajya Sabha Polls
-
Rajya Sabha polls: Congress may sequester its MLAs in resort
The ruling Congress is said to be planning to sequester its 135 MLAs in a private resort ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls scheduled for February 27 as the party leaders are worried over reports of its MLAs and independent members being approached by the NDA leaders.
The presence of Kupendra Reddy, a wealthy businessman, as JDS candidate in the electoral fray has disturbed the peace of top Congress leaders, especially, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president DK Shivakumar.
He had, on Monday, accused JDS leader HD Kumaraswamy of making “offers” to Congress MLAs to influence them to vote for his party candidate in the February 27 polls. The Congress has even filed a complaint with the Vidhana Soudha police accusing the Opposition parties of trying to lure its MLAs with offers of bribes for voting for the JDS candidate in the RS polls.
Reddy has emerged as NDA’s surprise fifth candidate. If not for him, the four candidates would have won unopposed.
The Congress is confident of securing the full support of its 135 MLAs, and three independents to get its three candidates through. There are only four RS vacancies in Karnataka, and the BJP and Congress have fielded one and three candidates, respectively. The JDS has maintained that it has fielded Reddy not to let the NDA’s surplus votes go waste. AICC leader Ajay Maken and sitting Rajya Sabha members GC Chandrashekar and Syed Naseer Hussain are contesting from the Congress while the BJP has fielded former MLC Narayansa Bhandage. A candidate needs 45 votes to win.
(You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel)
-
Rajya Sabha Polls: Sonia, Nadda Among 41 Elected Unopposed, Voting For 15 Seats On Feb 27 |
New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha elections saw 41 candidates getting elected without any opposition on Tuesday, including former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, BJP president JP Nadda, Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan, and BJP’s new entrant Ashok Chavan. The remaining 15 seats in Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will go to polls on February 27. The BJP emerged as the biggest winner, securing 20 seats, followed by the Congress (6), Trinamool Congress (4), YSR Congress (3 ), RJD (2), BJD (2) and NCP, Shiv Sena, BRS and JD(U) one each. The returning officers declared these 41 candidates as winners on the last date of withdrawal of nominations, as there were no other contenders for these seats.
The biennial elections were scheduled for February 27 in 56 seats. Out of these, 50 members will retire on April 2 and six on April 3. The voting for 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh, four in Karnataka and one in Himachal Pradesh will take place from 9 am to 4 pm and the counting will start from 5. pm on the same day.
Nadda and his party colleagues Jasvantsinh Parmar, Mayank Nayak and diamond tycoon Govindbhai Dholakia won from Gujarat. The Congress, which has only 15 MLAs, and other opposition parties did not field any candidates against the BJP, which has 156 legislators in the 182-member Gujarat assembly.
Sonia Gandhi was among the three candidates who won from Rajasthan, along with BJP’s Chunnilal Garasiya and Madan Rathore.
Maharashtra also saw six candidates getting elected unopposed – BJP’s Chavan, who switched from the Congress last Tuesday, Medha Kulkarni and Ajit Gopchhade; Shiv Sena’s Milind Deora, who quit the Congress last month, Praful Patel (NCP) and Chandrakant Handore (Cong).
In Bihar, JD(U)’s Sanjay Kumar Jha, BJP’s Dharmshila Gupta and Bhim Singh, Manoj Kumar Jha and Sanjay Yadav (both RJD) and Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Congress) were the winners.
Uttar Pradesh will have a contest for 10 seats among 11 candidates. The BJP has nominated eight candidates – former Union minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, state party general secretary Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant, party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh, former Agra mayor Naveen Jain and local industrialist and ex-SP leader Sanjay Seth who joined the BJP in 2019.
The Samajwadi Party (SP) has nominated Jaya Bachchan and also named former MP Ramjilal Suman and retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan as its candidates.
In Karnataka, four seats will see a fight among five candidates. The Congress has put up Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrasekhar, while Narayansa Bandage is the BJP candidate. JD(S) leader and ex-Rajya Sabha member D Kupendra Reddy is also in the fray.
In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has forced a contest by fielding Harsh Mahajan against Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi for the lone seat despite lacking enough MLAs to win.
In the evening, TMC’s Sushmita Dev, Sagarika Ghose, Mamata Thakur and Md Nadimul Haque and Samik Bhattacharya (BJP) were the winners from West Bengal.
Union minister Murugan, Valmiki Dham Ashram head Umesh Nath Maharaj, Kisan Morcha’s national vice president Banshilal Gurjar, and Madhya Pradesh BJP’s women wing president Maya Naroliya secured four seats for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh while Ashok Singh of the Congress also won without any opposition.
From Odisha, Union minister Vaishnaw (BJP) and BJD’s Debashish Samantray and Subhashish Khuntia were the winners.
The YSR Congress bagged all the three seats in Andhra Pradesh – G Babu Rao, YV Subba Reddy and M Raghunath Reddy while in neighboring Telangana, the ruling Congress won two seats – Renuka Chowdhury and Anil Kumar Yadav – and BRS one seat – V Ravichandra.
BJP nominees in Uttarakhand (Mahendra Bhatt), Subhash Barala (Haryana), Devendra Pratap Singh (Chhattisgarh) won without any contest.
-
40 per cent of newly elected Rajya Sabha MPs have prison circumstances: Report
The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch stated the report was primarily based on the evaluation of self-sworn affidavits of all 57 MPs who had been elected to Rajya Sabha this month.
-
Rajya Sabha elections: Haryana impartial’s vote validity to face judicial problem
Express News Service
NEW DELHI: The final chapter within the Haryana Rajya Sabha election saga is but to be written. A photocopy of a poll paper purportedly of an Independent MLA is doing the rounds in Congress circles. This MLA marked his vote in favour of Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma who was later declared elected.
What was fascinating on this poll paper was that the voting mark was not discovered within the prescribed field however subsequent to Sharma’s identify. Sources mentioned Congress will problem the validity of this vote. Its authorized staff is huddled collectively to arrange a petition, which shall be filed in court docket on Monday.
The petition reportedly will demand the rejection of the Independent’s vote. It might alternatively search a ruling declaring celebration MLA Kiran Choudhary’s rejected vote as legitimate. Sharma had edged previous Maken on the premise of the second choice votes. His margin of victory is so skinny that if the court docket rejects the Independent MLA’s vote, Maken will win. Sources mentioned Kiran’s vote was rejected as a result of she had put a tick mark in entrance of Maken’s identify as an alternative of writing the number one within the field alongside.
When the poll of the Independent got here up for scrutiny, Returning Officer Rajendra Singh Nandal is learnt to have identified that the vote was not written within the prescribed field. There are three horizontal packing containers on the poll. First has the identify of the candidate, second the picture, and the final field is for marking the vote. The Independent MLA put the mark ‘1’ within the identify field.
Nandal reportedly insisted on rejecting the vote, however Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Agarwal and Special Observer Anurag Agarwal, each IAS officers, overruled him. Nandal is a state companies officer. The IAS duo reportedly mentioned that the intention of the Independent was clear, to which Nandal mentioned Kiran’s intention, too, was equally clear. The query, Nandal reportedly mentioned, was whether or not the choice was marked in a prescribed method or not.
-
‘If Raut is aware of who voted for whom, then he’s like Sanjay of Mahabharat’: MLA’s dig at Shiv Sena
By PTI
MUMBAI: Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) MLA Shyamsundar Shinde on Sunday refuted Shiv Sena chief Sanjay Raut’s cost that he didn’t vote for the MVA and likened the Sena MP to the Sanjay of Mahabharat who might see the Kurukshetra struggle with out being current there via “divyadrishti” or divine imaginative and prescient.
Calling himself an affiliate member of the Nationalist Congress Party, Shinde stated he had voted for MVA candidates as per the directions of the get together.
Shinde is the second MLA after Swambhimani Paksha’s Devendra Bhuyar to refute Raut’s allegation that at the least six MLAs didn’t vote for the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (comprising the Sena, NCP and Congress), regardless of assuring to take action within the recently-held Rajya Sabha polls for six seats in Maharashtra.
Shiv Sena’s second nominee Sanjay Pawar misplaced the keenly-watched contest for the sixth seat to BJP’s third nominee Dhananjay Mahadik.
Even Raut managed to get 41 votes, the minimal variety of preferential votes wanted to be elected as a Rajya Sabha MP in Friday’s polls.
“The MLAs of major parties were supposed to show the votes cast by them to their respective representatives. The rest were not supposed to show it to anyone,” Shinde instructed reporters.
While Sena’s second nominee Sanjay Pawar misplaced to BJP’s third nominee Dhananjay Mahadik, different MVA partners- NCP and Congress- gained one seat every.
The BJP bagged all of the three seats it had contested.
Taking a dig at Raut, the PWP MLA stated, “If he knows which of these MLAs votes for whom then he is the Sanjay of Mahabharat. I have voted only for the MVA candidates in the Rajya Sabha polls”.
He, nevertheless, didn’t elaborate which candidate he voted for as the primary, second and third desire in RS polls.
After Sena’s Pawar misplaced to Mahadik in a cliffhanger, Raut stated three MLAs of the Bahujan Vikas Aghadi (BVA), an unbiased MLA from Karmala Sanjaymama Shinde, Swabhimani Party MLA Devendra Bhuyar, and PWP MLA Shyamsunder Shinde didn’t vote for the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) regardless of assuring to take action.
“Some horses were up for sale at a higher price and shifted sides despite the assurance of their votes to our candidate,” Raut had stated.
Earlier within the day, MLA Bhuyar claimed he had voted for the Shiv Sena within the RS polls.
-
Cross voting in Rajya Sabha polls: Congress expels its Haryana MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi from all get together positions
By PTI
NEW DELHI: A day after shedding the Rajya Sabha election in Haryana as a result of cross-voting, the Congress cracked the whip and expelled its legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi from all get together positions.
The Haryana Congress has alleged that Bishnoi, an MLA from the Adampur constituency in Hisar, didn’t vote for the get together candidate Ajay Maken and cross-voted in favour of Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma, who was supported by the ruling BJP-JJP mix.
The Congress had 31 MLA and wanted as many votes to win the Rajya Sabha seat from Haryana, however one in all its legislators cross-voted and one other’s vote was cancelled.
“The Congress president has expelled Kuldeep Bishnoi from all his present party positions, including the post of special invitee of the Congress Working Committee, with immediate effect,” an announcement from AICC normal secretary Okay C Venugopal stated.
Bishnoi had not attended any of the get together conferences of its legislators and had stated that he has voted as per his conscience.
-
Maha RS ballot outcomes not stunning; NCP obtained additional vote from ‘reverse aspect’ impartial MLA: Pawar
BJP candidates – Union minister Piyush Goyal and former state minister Anil Bonde, and Dhananjay Mahadik – gained the fiercely contested election performed on Friday.
-
Maha Vikas Aghadi 4th candidate loses to BJP opponent in excessive voltage biennial RS elections
Express News Service
MUMBAI: Big setback to Maha Vikas Aghadi in Rajya Sabha elections. Shiv Sena’s second candidate Sanjay Pawar received defeated by BJP candidate Dhananjay Mahadik within the second choice of vote relying on the early morning of Saturday.
Union minister Piyush Goel, BJP chief Dr Anil Bhonde and Dhananjay Mahadik gained the Rajya Sabha elections whereas NCP chief Praful Patel, Congress chief Imran Pratapgarhi and Shiv Sena chief Sanjay Raut gained the election whereas Shiv Sena candidate Sanjay Pawar misplaced it once more BJP candidate Dhananjay Mahadik.
In a neck and neck struggle, union minister Piyush Goel and Dr Anil Bhonde secured 48 votes whereas Dhananjay Mahadik received 26 as first choice votes towards the successful quota of 41 seats. On the opposite hand, NCP chief Praful Patel received 43 votes, Congress chief Imran Pratapgarhi secured 44 votes, Sanjay Raut received 41 votes and Sanjay Pawar received 33 votes. Mahadik and Sanjay Pawar couldn’t compete the required quota within the first spherical, due to this fact, the second choice votes have been counted and BJP’s extra first choice votes received transferred to him which helped Mahadik to win the elections within the second spherical.
BJP was capable of get extra 12 votes towards its precise numbers. BJP efficiently pursued unbiased MLAs and smaller events to forged their votes for BJP candidates. Independent was king maker and BJP used them correctly.
-
Maharashtra RS polls: BJP baggage 3 of 6 seats in main setback to ruling Sena-NCP-Cong alliance
By PTI
MUMBAI: In a significant setback to Maharashtra’s ruling alliance of Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, the BJP on Saturday received three of the six Rajya Sabha seats within the state, even because the ruling mix questioned the eight-hour delay in counting of votes.
The winners embody BJP candidates Union minister Piyush Goyal and former state minister Anil Bonde and Dhananjay Mahadik. Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut, NCP’s Praful Patel and Congress’ Imran Pratapgarhi additionally received the fiercely-fought elections.
The contest was for the sixth seat the BJP had fielded former MP Dhananjay Mahadik and the Shiv Sena candidate was Sanjay Pawar, who misplaced. Mahadik and Pawar hail from Kolhapur in western Maharashtra.
The high-stake battle for the sixth turned out to be a nail-biting affair with the Congress and BJP buying and selling prices, even approaching the Election Commission.
“Elections are contested not just for the fight, but the victory.bJai Maharashtra,” tweeted BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis, whose refusal to have a consensus candidates for the Rajya Sabha led to elections within the state after 23 years.
The counting of votes began after an eight-hour delay amid complaints of cross voting and guidelines violation by the BJP and the ruling alliance.bBoth BJP and the Shiv Sena approached the Election Commission, alleging cross voting and looking for disqualification of votes.bThe ballot panel directed the Rajya Sabha election returning officer of Maharashtra to reject the vote forged by Shiv Sena legislator Suhas Kande, after which the counting of votes obtained underway.