From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: Forty candidates were declared unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday on the close of nominations, 11 of them from Uttar Pradesh where the ruling BJP bagged 8 seats and three by the Samajwadi Party, including former Congress leader Kapil Sibal, Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Choudhary and Javed Ali. Also re-elected from Tamil Nadu is former union minister P Chidambaram, who had won last time from Maharashtra.
Polling is to take place on June 10 for 17 other seats in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka. It will be a thriller in all four states The BJP fielded additional candidates besides the seats it can win, Dhananjay Mahadik in Maharashtra and Lahar Singh in Karnataka while backing independents Subhash Chandra of ZEE TV from Rajasthan and Kartikeya Sharma in Haryana.
Bihar sent five unopposed including RJD chief’s eldest daughter Misa Bharti for the second term. Others elected are: Faiyaz Ahmad (RJD), Khiru Mahto (JD-U), Satish Chandra Dubey (second term) and Shambhu Sharan Patel from the BJP.
Others elected unopposed include P Chidambaram of Congress besides KRN Rajesh, S Kalyanasundaram and R Girirajan of DMK and CV Shanmugam and R Dharmar of AIADMK from Tamil Nadu, Vivek Tankha (Congress) for second term and Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar from ruling BJP in Madhya Pradesh, Sulato Deo, Manas Mangaraj and Sasmit Patra (all BJD) from Odisha, AAP’s Sant Balbir Singh Sichewala, an emvironalist, and social workers Vikramjit Singh Sahni from Punjab, Congress general secretary Rajeev Shukla and secretary Ranjit Ranjan from Chhattisgarh, JMM’s Aditya Sahu and Mahua Majhi from Jharkhand and Dr Kalpana Saini of BJP from Uttarakhand besides four of Telugu Desam Party and two from the Congress in Andhra Pradesh.
In Rajasthan where the Congress has fielded general secretaries Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik as also Pramod Tiwari from UP, election of the third candidate is tricky because of Subhash Chandra getting the backing of the BJP. Last time, Subhash Chandra had won from Haryana because of rejection of some Congress votes. Tiwari needs the vote of every independent MLA backing the Ashok Gehlot government.
In Haryana, factionalism in Congress has cast a shadow on Congress general secretary Ajay Maken as the Congress with 31 MLA has just enough strength to see him through, but Kartikeya Sharma will make it tough for him.
It’s chaos in Karnataka having four seats where both Congress and BJP have fielded “extra” candidates, each requiring 45 votes. With 119 MLA in the state Assembly, the BJP’s Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and actor Jaggesh will sail through easily, leaving 29 surplus votes.
Congress, with around 69 MLAs, can get elected easily former union minister Jairam Ramesh and as such both Congress and BJP are wooing the Janata Dal(S) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, as it has 31 MLAs and five of them have declared to defy the party whip. The JD(S) has also fielded a candidate, Kupendra Reddy.
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