NDA gains RS ground, BJP bags 11 of 24 seats
NEW DELHI: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained crucial ground in the Rajya Sabha on Friday, winning eight of the 19 seats across eight states that went to polls in the first major electoral exercise since the outbreak of Covid-19. The party has earlier won three of the five seats where candidates have won unopposed.
Former Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia of the BJP, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh and former Jharkhand chief minister Shibu Soren were among the heavyweights who emerged victorious on Friday even as high drama unfolded in Gujarat and Manipur, where the counting of votes began late amidst allegations of irregularities.
The Bjp-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which had 90 members in the Rajya Sabha, took its tally to 101 in the 245-member Upper House, where the majority mark is 123. This is for the first time that the NDA tally in the Upper House has breached 100. The BJP alone will have 86 seats. The Congressled United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will have 65 seats.
The NDA, if backed by parties such as the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), can breach the halfway mark in the Upper House, and will be in a position to push key legislations in Parliament. It has an overwhelming majority in the Lok Sabha.
Elections to 24 seats in 10 states were initially scheduled for March 26, but they were deferred as India clamped a lockdown to stop the spread of the disease around that time. From the original list, four candidates in Karnataka, including former prime minister HD Devegowda, and one in Arunachal Pradesh were elected unopposed. Polling was held in the remaining seats on Friday. Altogether, the BJP won 11 of the 24 seats.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) and hand sanitizer were in supply in polling booths on Friday, and social distancing norms followed with nearly 1,000 legislators taking part in the polling process in the shadow of the pandemic. In Gujarat, the ruling BJP won three seats (Narhari Amin, Abhay Bharadwaj and Ramilaben Bara) and the Congress one (Shaktisinh Gohil). The resignation of eight MLAS since March denied the Congress a chance to bag the second seat. The declaration of the result was delayed after the Congress demanded that the Election Commission invalidate two BJP votes on different grounds.
The Congress objected to Bhupendrasinh Chudasama casting his vote on the ground that his election was annulled by the Gujarat high court in May. The Supreme Court has stayed that order. The party also red-flagged Kesrisinh Solanki’s vote, saying an unauthorised person accompanied him inside the booth.