New Delhi: In the Rajya Sabha elections to be held on June 10, many candidates have been elected unopposed during the last two days from states like Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, while interesting contests await in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra. , Rajasthan, Karnataka and Haryana.
All six Tamil Nadu candidates who filed their nominations for the biennial elections, including three from the ruling DMK, were declared elected unopposed by the authorities on Friday.
The ruling DMK’s S Kalyanasundaram, R Girirajan and KRN Rajesh Kumar, AIADMK’s CV Shanmugam and R Dharmar and Congress’s P Chidambaram were declared elected unopposed after the deadline for withdrawal of candidature expired (June 3).
Elections for a total of 57 Rajya Sabha members from 15 states, including Uttar Pradesh, whose term ends during June-August 2022, are being conducted by the Election Commission.
Renowned environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal and entrepreneur and social activist Vikramjit Singh Sahni have been elected unopposed as AAP candidates to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab as none of the candidates withdrew their nomination papers till 3 pm on the last day of withdrawal of nominations. .
In Maharashtra, the Shiv Sena and the BJP will fight it out for the sixth Rajya Sabha seat as none of the seven candidates – four from the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) and three from the BJP – withdrew their nominations on Friday. The BJP has fielded Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde and former MP Dhananjay Mahadik, while the Shiv Sena has fielded two candidates, Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar. NCP has given ticket to Praful Patel, while Congress has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi. The contest on the sixth seat is between Mahadik of BJP and Sanjay Pawar of Shiv Sena.
Ahead of the deadline, a three-member delegation of the MVA met senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis here on Friday and requested that his party withdraw its third candidate.
The MVA delegation told Fadnavis that the BJP may take an additional seat in the biennial Legislative Council polls to be held later this month if it withdraws its third candidate for the Rajya Sabha polls. But the BJP was adamant on fielding a third candidate and Fadnavis made a counter-proposal to the three-party alliance in the state.
In Jharkhand, ruling key alliance partner Mahua Maji of the JMM and Aditya Sahu of the BJP were declared elected unopposed to the Upper House.
Another BJP candidate from Uttarakhand, Kalpana Saini, was also elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Saini will replace Pradeep Tamta of Congress whose term ends next month. In Madhya Pradesh, Congress leader and senior advocate Vivek Tankha and BJP’s Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar were declared elected unopposed, while the ruling Congress in neighboring Chhattisgarh sent Rajiv Shukla and Ranjeet Ranjan unopposed to elders’ homes. Shukla, a journalist-turned-politician hailing from Uttar Pradesh, has been a Rajya Sabha MP for three times before this.
Ranjan is a former Lok Sabha member from Bihar.
Four candidates of the ruling YSR Congress – V Vijayasai Reddy, Bida Mastan Rao, R Krishnaiah and S Niranjan Reddy – were elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh as they were the ones to file nominations when the process ended here on Tuesday.
