Voting for the 16 vacant Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra began at 9 am on Friday. Voting will be held till 4 pm, and the counting of votes will start at 5 pm.
Between June 21 and August 1, 75 seats in the Upper House will be vacant in 15 states. However, 41 candidates have won unopposed in 11 states.
Those declared winners include 14 from BJP, four from Congress and Yuvajan Shramik Rythu Congress Party, and three from Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Biju Janata Dal.
Two candidates each from Aam Aadmi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Telangana Rashtra Samithi and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, one each from Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Janata Dal (United), Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal have also been elected. , One of them is an independent candidate.
Senior leaders whose Rajya Sabha term will end by August 1 include Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s TKS Elangovan.
The counting of votes in the Rajya Sabha elections from Maharashtra began after 1 pm on Saturday after the green signal of the Election Commission. The counting of votes was to start at 5 pm. On Friday, however, it could not be taken up as the BJP approached the Election Commission alleging violation of rules by three MLAs of the state’s ruling coalition of MVA. Meanwhile, the MVA had also filed a similar complaint against the BJP.
“The process has started after a wait of eight hours,” NCP State president and election in-charge Jayant Patil said. The ECI took almost eight hours to decide the validity of the votes objected to, said the State Minister.
In Haryana, too, the counting of votes began late on Friday night after the Election Commission gave its green signal, officials said.
The counting of votes was stopped following complaints of violation of rules. Officials said the counting of votes began at midnight after the Election Commission allowed the returning officer to proceed.
The BJP and its supported Independents have urged the Election Commission to cancel the votes of two Congress MLAs in the state.
While these results have broad political implications in each state, they will have little impact on the arithmetic of the Rajya Sabha, where the BJP will be well ahead of the Congress with 95 members. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh won in Karnataka.
The other two BJP members to win are Kannada actor Jaggesh and former MLC Lahar Singh Siroya. JD(S) MLA Srinivasa Gowda openly defied the party’s decree. He told reporters he voted for Congress because he loved the party and indicated that he would switch sides soon. Another JD(S) MLA, S.R. Srinivas, is said to have voted for the BJP. These results will adversely affect JD(S)-Congress relations ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka.
