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Sushil Modi elected to Rajya Sabha, BJP now has 4 Bihar MPs in upper house
Sushil Kumar Modi was elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed after the nomination papers of lone Independent candidate Shyam Nandan Prasad was rejected during scrutiny.
With the election of senior BJP leader and former deputy chief minister of Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi to the Rajya Sabha unopposed, the number of the party’s MPs in the upper house from the state has risen to four.
Modi was on Monday declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha in a bypoll that was necessitated by the death of Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party founder Ram Vilas Paswan.
In addition to the former deputy chief minister, a lone Independent candidate, Shyam Nandan Prasad had filed his nomination papers which were rejected during scrutiny. Prasad’s papers were not supported by at least 10 members of the 243-strong assembly as proposers, which is mandatory, poll officials said.
Modi was handed over his certificate in the presence of a host of dignitaries, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, with whom he is known to enjoy an excellent rapport, his successors as deputy chief minister Tar Kishore Prasad and Renu Devi and state BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal.
Of the 16 members to Rajya Sabha from Bihar, JD (U) and the RJD have five each while Congress has one representation to the Rajya Sabha and one seat is vacant. Besides Modi, the other three BJP Rajya Sabha MPs are Gopal Narain Singh, Vivek Thakur and Satish Chandra Dubey.
The senior BJP leader, while being elected to RS, attained a rare distinction of representing all the four houses of the country. He had been a member of Lok Sabha, Bihar Legislative Assembly and Legislative council and now a member of the Rajya Sabha.
Modi was the leader of the opposition in Bihar assembly from 1996-2004. In 2004, he was elected to 14 the Lok Sabha from Bhagalpur parliamentary constituency, a seat which he vacated after becoming the deputy CM of NDA government in Bihar in 2005.
