New Delhi: P Chidambaram and Rajeev Shukla of the Congress, BJP’s Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar, former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, RJD’s Misa Bharti and Jayant Chaudhary of the RLD were among the 41 winners declared elected unopposed Friday to the Rajya Sabha.
All the 11 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, six in Tamil Nadu, five in Bihar, four in Andhra Pradesh, three each in Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each in Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Telangana and Jharkhand and one candidate in Uttarakhand won without a contest.
Of the 41 winners, 14 are from the BJP, four each from Congress and YSR Congress; three each from DMK and BJD; two each from AAP, RJD, TRS, AIADMK, one each from JMM, JDU, SP and RLD besides Independent Sibal.
Elections were scheduled to be held June 10 to fill 57 Rajya Sabha seats from 15 states that will be falling vacant due to the retirement of members on different dates between June and August. Friday was the last date for withdrawal of candidature. Now elections will be held June 10 for six seats in Maharashtra, four each in Rajasthan and Karnataka and two in Haryana. Results will be declared the same day.
Of the 11 Rajya Sabha candidates declared elected in Uttar Pradesh, eight are from BJP, one each from AAP, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Samajwadi Party and RLD (Rashtriya Lok Dal), along with independent Sibal.
The winners from the state are Jayant Chaudhary (RLD), Javed Ali Khan (SP), Darshana Singh, Babu Ram Nishad, Mithilesh Kumar, Radha Mohan Dal Agarwal, K Laxman, Laxmikant Bajpai, Surendra Singh Nagar, Sangeeta Yadav (all BJP).
The winners from Tamil Nadu are the ruling DMK’s S Kalyanasundaram, R Girirajan and KRN Rajesh Kumar, AIADMK’s C Ve Shanmugam and R Dharmar and Congress’s Chidambaram.
With Chidambaram’s election, the Congress party would have a member from Tamil Nadu in the Rajya Sabha after a long gap. In 2016, Chidambaram was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra and his term ends on July 4.
All five candidates from Bihar were elected unopposed – Misa Bharti and Faiyaz Ahmed (RJD), Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel (BJP), and Kheeru Mahto (JDU).
Bharti, the eldest daughter of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, and Dubey shall be enjoying their second consecutive terms.
V Vijayasai Reddy, Beeda Masthan Rao, R Krishnaiah and S Niranjan Reddy of the ruling YSR Congress were also elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh. With this win, the strength of the YSRC has now increased to nine in Rajya Sabha, out of 11 from the state, with the TDP and the BJP having one member each. Vijayasai has been re-elected for the second consecutive term.
