Sharad Pawar, Athawale, Bhosale among seven elected to Rajya Sabha

The election for the seven seats from Maharashtra in which Assembly members will cast their votes was to be held on March 26

Seven candidates, including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Union minister of state for social justice Ramdas Athawale have been elected to the Rajya Sabha after the nomination of an independent candidate was rejected on Monday.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar at Parliament House during the budget session, in New Delhi, on Monday, March 16, 2020. (Sanjeev Verma/HT PHOTO)

NCP leader and former minister Fauziya Khan, Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi, Congress’s former parliamentarian Rajiv Satav and Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Udayanraje Bhosale and Bhagwat Karad, too, have been elected to the Upper House of the Parliament.

The official announcement of the elections will be made on Wednesday, the last day of the withdrawal.

The election for the seven seats from the state in which Assembly members will cast their votes was to be held on March 26. On the basis of their strength, the three ruling parties (Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) fielded four candidates, while the prime Opposition party BJP fielded three candidates, leaving little chance for an additional candidate in the fray. Independent candidate Rakesh Chavan filed his papers on the last day of filing nomination on Friday.

“His nomination was not filed in an appropriate manner. He did not submit signatures of 10 proposers who need to be MLAs nor had he deposited ₹10,000 with his nomination. The nomination form too was not duly filled. We rejected it in today’s scrutiny. Chavan had raised objections to the nominations by other candidates too, but all those have been rejected,” said an official from the state legislature.

Vilas Athawale, assistant returning officer, said the announcement of the elected candidates will be made only after the last day of withdrawal of nomination. The biennial elections for the seven seats of Rajya Sabha were announced along with 48 other seats across the country. Along with Pawar and Athawale, NCP’s Majid Memon, BJP’s Amar Sable, Shiv Sena’s Rajkumar Dhoot and an Independent candidate member Sanjay Kakade are retiring on April 2 from Rajya Sabha.