Pawar, Athawale elected unopposed to RS
Mumbai, March 18: Seven candidates, including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Union minister of state for social justice Ramdas Athawale were on Wednesday elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha.
The election for the seven seats from Maharashtra in which Assembly members were to cast their votes was to be held on March 26.
NCP leader and former minister Fauziya Khan, Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi, former Congress MP Rajiv Satav and Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Udayanraje Bhosale and Bhagwat Karad were among those elected to the Upper
House. The official announcement of the elections was made on Wednesday, the last day of the withdrawal of forms.
On the basis of their strength, the three ruling parties (Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress) fielded four candidates, while the main 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 but it was rejected later during scrutiny.
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, BJPs Amar Sable, Shiv Sena’s Rajkumar Dhoot and an Independent candidate member Sanjay Kakade are retiring on April 2 from Rajya Sabha.
Meanwhile, former state president of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha, Indu Goswami was elected to Rajya Sabha from Himachal Pradesh.
Ms Goswami, 52, was declared as elected unopposed by Himachal Pradesh Assembly secretary Yash Paul Sharma.
She had filed her nomination on March 13 and the scrutiny of her papers was done on March 16.
Accompanied by chief minister Jai Ram Thakur, state BJP chief Rajeev Bindal and education minister Suresh Bhardwaj, Goswami was handed over a certificate of her election to the Upper House by state assembly secretary Yash Paul Sharma.
Speaking to the media, the chief minister said the BJP had sought cooperation from the Congress and other Opposition parties, and they decided not to field candidates for the Rajya Sabha seat.
The ruling BJP has a total of 44 MLAs in the 68member Himachal Pradesh Assembly. Two independent MLAs are also supporting the BJP.
Congress has 21 members, whereas the CPI(M) has one MLA in the state assembly.
The BJP’s central election committee had on March 12 cleared Goswami’s name from the state for the Rajya Sabha election. Ms Goswami had resigned from the post of chief of state BJP’s Mahila Morcha in July last year. Earlier, she had unsuccessfully contested the last assembly elections from Palampur constituency where she lost to Congress candidate Ashish Butail. One of the three Rajya Sabha seats from the state will fall vacant as Vipolve Thakur of the Congress is set to retire from the Upper House on April 9.