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Rajya Sabha polls for 37 seats across 10 states today; Nitish Kumar, Nitin Nabin in fray
The polls are being held for 37 seats across 10 states, 4 of which are ruled by the opposition parties. The counting of votes will be done on the same day.
Patna/Bhubaneswar: Hectic political activity was witnessed in three states — Bihar, Odisha and Haryana — where voting will be required to elect 11 seats in the Rajya Sabha polls on Monday, even as 26 seats across seven states are set to be elected unopposed.
The biennial elections are being held for 37 seats – seven in Maharashtra, four in Odisha, six in Tamil Nadu, five in West Bengal, three in Assam, five in Bihar, two in Chhattisgarh, two in Haryana, one in Himachal Pradesh and two in Telangana. The NDA, which is in power in six of the 10 states going to the polls for the Upper House, has 134 members in the 234-strong Rajya Sabha and is set to increase its tally. The Opposition INDIA bloc, which is in power in four states, holds 80 seats.
The counting will be held on the same day.
In Bihar, the NDA camp seemed confident of making a clean sweep on all five seats with three key leaders — Nitish Kumar (JD-U), Nitin Nabin (BJP) and Upendra Kushwaha (RLM) — in the fray. The other two NDA candidates are Union minister Ram Nath Thakur of the JD(U), who aims at a hat-trick and BJP state general secretary Shivesh Kumar.
“All NDA leaders are confident about all five seats. The unease is in the opposition camp, and they are in a huddle. That shows which side is not sure of the outcome,” JD(U) minister Vijay Kumar Chaudhary said.
The RJD, meanwhile, is banking heavily on the support of All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM), which has five MLAs. RJD national working president Tejashwi Yadav visited the residence of AIMIM state president Akhtarul Iman on Sunday.
“The party has decided to support RJD leader Amrendra Dhari Singh in the RS polls”, Iman told news agency PTI. Tejashwi Yadav, too, said, “All secular parties are united, and our MLAs will vote for the RJD candidate.”
In Odisha, the biennial RS elections for four seats have descended into a high-stakes political drama, with the state Congress issuing a show-cause notice to a missing MLA while two men were arrested in Karnataka for allegedly attempting to bribe legislators, and the BJP ferrying its MLAs to the port town of Paradip for “voting procedure training”.
In Bengaluru, two people from Odisha were arrested after allegedly sneaking into a resort where eight of the 14 Congress MLAs of the state are being housed and approaching at least one legislator with a blank cheque.
Ashok Kumar Das, deputy leader of the Odisha Congress Legislature Party, said he has lodged a complaint against four unknown people who offered MLAs “crores of rupees each” to cross-vote, and that when the offer was rejected, they threatened to kill them. “We have been told that two persons have been arrested,” said Das.
Separately, the Congress on Sunday show-caused its MLA Dasarathi Gamang over his “disappearance”.
The BJP, meanwhile, moved its MLAs to Paradip on Saturday evening, accompanied by the two deputy chief ministers, for a training session on Rajya Sabha voting procedure. Chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi arrived in Paradip on Sunday to oversee the preparations. The MLAs are scheduled to depart on Monday and cast their votes directly. BJD chief Naveen Patnaik continued to meet party MLAs at his residence for the third consecutive day, appealing to them to desist from cross-voting. The parties have issued three-line whips to MLAs to ensure their presence in the assembly.
The four seats in Odisha were vacated by the expiry of the terms of BJD’s Niranjan Bishi, Munna Khan, and BJP’s Sujeet Kumar and Mamata Mohanta on April 2.
In Haryana, 31 state Congress MLAs, who were lodged at two resorts in Kufri near Shimla, were shifted to Kasauli on Sunday amid tight security, even as heavy rain and hailstorm lashed parts of Himachal Pradesh. Earlier in the day, chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu met the MLAs for lunch at a hotel in Kufri.
Two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana would fall vacant as BJP members Kiran Choudhry and Ram Chander Jangra are set to complete their terms on April 9.
BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia, Congress’s Karamvir Singh Boudh and BJP-backed Independent candidate Satish Nandal are in the fray, with each candidate requiring 31 votes to make it to the Upper House.
In Maharashtra, all seven candidates, including six of the ruling Mahayuti and NCP chief Sharad Pawar, are set to be elected unopposed. From the Mahayuti, Vinod Tawde, Ramrao Wadkute and Maya Ivnate of the BJP, Ramdas Athavale of RPI(A), Shiv Sena’s Jyoti Waghmare and former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar’s son Parth Pawar of the NCP are set to be elected unopposed.
In Tamil Nadu, DMK’s Tiruchi Siva and J Constantine Ravindran, Congress’s M Christopher Tilak, DMDK’s LK Sudeesh, AIADMK’s M Thambidurai, and PMK’s Anbumani Ramadoss are set to be elected unopposed to the state’s six Rajya Sabha seats.
In Himachal Pradesh, Congress’s Anurag Sharma is the lone candidate and is all set to be elected unopposed.
In Telangana, Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Vem Narender Reddy were elected unopposed to the state’s two Rajya Sabha seats.
In West Bengal, TMC’s Babul Supriyo, former state DGP Rajeev Kumar, senior Supreme Court advocate Menaka Guruswamy, actor Koel Mallick and BJP’s former state unit president Rahul Sinha are in the fray.
In Chhattisgarh, Phulo Devi Netam from Congress and BJP’s Laxmi Verma were elected unopposed, while in Assam, Jogen Mohan and Terash Gowala from BJP, Pramod Boro from ally UPPL will be elected unopposed.
