Jolt to BJP: Preeti Mahapatra loses, all other parties’ candidates win RS poll

Although the BJP allotted only four first preference votes to her, Mahapatra got 18 thereby managing to get 14 extra votes from the BJP’s rivals falling short of the requisite quota.

In yet another jolt to the BJP, the party supported candidate Preeti Mahapatra lost the Rajya Sabha election while the candidates of all major parties including the BJP won the cross voting marred Rajya Sabha election in Lucknow on Saturday.

BJP-backed independent candidate Preeti Mahapatra in a pensive mood after she lost the Rajya Sabha election in Lucknow on Saturday. (Ashok Dutta/HT Photo)

Although the BJP allotted only four first preference votes to her, Mahapatra got 18 thereby managing to get 14 extra votes from the BJP’s rivals falling short of the requisite quota. Three of them voted in favour of Mahapatra. Others elected include Samajwadi Party’s Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Sanjay Seth, Sukhram Yadav, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Surendra Singh Nagar and Revti Raman Singh. Others are BSP’s Satish Mishra and Ashok Siddharth and BJP candidate Shiv Pratap Shukla.

As voting progressed on Saturday there were reports of cross voting from all the parties. Alarmed by the reports of crossing from the Samajwadi Party and accusations by party MLAs Bhagwan Sharma alias Guddu Pandit and his brother Mukesh Sharma that they were being stopped from casting their vote, party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav reached Vidhan Bhawan and remained there for some time. At the end the Samajwadi Party candidates secured 241 first preference votes against the party’s strength of 229 in the Vidhan Sabha indicating that a large chunk of MLAs voted in favour of SP.