Rajya Sabha elections: BJP adds 9 more members to its tally

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has added nine members to its quota in the Rajya Sabha (RS), as its strength in the Upper House has increased to 92.

At present, the BJP is the single-largest party in the RS and along with its allies in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, the combined strength is over 100 lawmakers.

However, it is still 31 lawmakers short of the halfway mark of 123 in the 243-member Upper House.

On Monday, nine of BJP’s candidates—eight from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and one from neighbouring Uttarakhand—were declared elected unopposed to the Upper House.

Naresh Bansal was declared elected unopposed to the Upper House from Uttarakhand.

Earlier, Congress’s Raj Babbar represented this seat.

Bansal, who served as the state BJP working president last year, was also the general secretary organisation between 2002 and 2009.

In UP, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, sitting members of Parliament (MPs) Neeraj Shekar, Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Haridwar Dubey, Brij Lal, BL Verma and Seema Dwivedi were elected to the Upper house.

Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Ram Gopal Yadav was re-elected unopposed. Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Ramji Gautam was also elected to the RS without any electoral contest.

The Congress and the BSP’s strength have come down by two members each in the RS, while that of the SP by four MPs.

The Congress has 39 and 51 MPs in the RS and the Lok Sabha, respectively.

In the Lok Sabha, the Congress does not have a single MP from Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Manipur.