Chidambaram, Prabhu, Goyal win unopposed in RS polls

Former finance minister P Chidambaram, railway minister Suresh Prabhu and coal minister Piyush Goyal made a smooth entry to the Rajya Sabha on Friday as they remained unopposed on the last day for withdrawal of nominations in the biennial polls.

Former finance minister P Chidambaram, railway minister Suresh Prabhu and coal minister Piyush Goyal made a smooth entry to the Rajya Sabha on Friday as they remained unopposed on the last day for withdrawal of nominations in the biennial polls.

Among the others who won unchallenged, RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s daughter Misa Bharti won from Bihar, debuting in parliament after unsuccessfully contesting the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

On the last day for withdrawal of nominations for this round of the election for the Upper House of Parliament, 31 candidates from nine states ensured their seats. 23 candidates from six other states will face the poll on June 11, in which a large number of independent candidates have jumped into the fray.

The fate of contestants from Karnataka hangs in balance as the Election Commission is awaiting a report from the state electoral office on the sting operation where bribes were allegedly offered for supporting candidates.

Congress, the largest party in the Upper House, lost 5 seats on Friday but is likely to win a few seats during the polling.

Along with Bharti, former law minister of the first NDA, Ram Jethmalani, will return to the House, this time on a RJD ticket. Jethmalani had been fielded by the BJP in his last term from Rajasthan but he fell off with a large section of the BJP leadership.

Apart from Prabhu and Goyal, minister of state for science and technology Satyanarayana Chowdary got elected unanimously. In Andhra Pradesh, Vijaysai Reddy won unopposed to be the lone face of the YSR Congress in the Upper House. Former union minister Praful Patel of NCP, Congress leader Ambika Soni and Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut also secured their RS berths on Friday.

JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and party nominee Ramchandra Prasad Singh has also been elected unopposed even as all these results would be formally announced later. From Bihar, the BJP has got Gopal Narayan Singh an unopposed candidate.

While no contestant withdrew from the race in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, a YSR Congress candidate from Andhra Pradesh, V Sunanda Reddy, took back her nomination, paving the way for the smooth poll in four seats.