Lucknow: Eight candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and two candidates of Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh on Monday (November 2). The last date for the withdrawal of names for election to the Upper House was on Monday.
The BJP candidates who have been elected include Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Arun Singh, Haridwar Dubey, Brij Lal, Neeraj Shekhar, Geeta Shakya, Seema Dwivedi, and BL Varma.
Prof Ram Gopal Yadav of the Samajwadi Party was declared elected unopposed while the BSP`s Ramji Gautam was also elected to the Upper House.
Earlier, a political drama was witnessed for the tenth seat between BSP`s Ramji Gautam and an independent candidate Prakash Bajaj, backed by the SP. The matter was resolved when the nomination of Bajaj was canceled and the BSP candidate won despite having only ten votes of his party.
BJP's Naresh Bansal declared elected unopposed to RS from Uttarakhand
Senior BJP leader Naresh Bansal was declared elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Uttarakhand today with no other party in the contest. Bansal was handed over the certificate of his election from the seat by Uttarakhand Vidhan Sabha Secretary Mukesh Singhal as the deadline for withdrawal of nominations came to an end here at 3 pm.
Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat, his cabinet colleagues Subodh Uniyal, Arvind Pandey, Pradesh BJP president Basidhar Bhagat and a host of party MLAs were present as Bansal was declared elected unopposed to the Upper House of Parliament.
Polling for the seat was scheduled to be held on November 9 but it became unnecessary as no other party fielded its candidate from the seat. As per the constitutional norms, in circumstances like these, the lone candidate in the fray is given the certificate of the election at the end of the deadline for withdrawal of nominations.
Bansal's unopposed election to the Upper House from Uttarakhand was a mere formality with the BJP having 57 out of a total of 70 seats in the state assembly and no challenger to him in the fray.
Bypoll for K'taka RS seat on December 1
The Election Commission on Monday announced that bypoll to the Rajya Sabha seat from Karnataka vacated following the death of Ashok Gasti due to COVID-19 will be held on December 1.
Ashok Gasti of BJP had died on September 17. His term as a Rajya Sabha member was otherwise to end in June, 2026.
According to the EC statement, the notification for the bypolls will be issued on November 11. Notably, the counting of votes will take place an hour after voting is completed.
(With Agency Inputs)
