10 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh

Eight Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates and one nominee each of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) were declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh on Monday.

Special secretary (state assembly) and returning officer Ashok Kumar declared them elected after the withdrawal of nominations closed on Monday afternoon.

“Yes, we have declared the 10 candidates elected unopposed,” said Kumar. Those elected include three sitting BJP MPs — union minister Hardeep Singh

Puri, former Ballia MP Neeraj Shekhar (son of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar) and party general secretary Arun Singh. Their present term in the Rajya Sabha is scheduled to end on November 25.

The other BJP nominees elected include former minister Hardwar Dubey, former DGP Brij Lal, three-term MLA Seema Dwivedi, former Auraiya unit chief Geeta Shakya and UP BJP vice president BL Verma.

Samajwadi Party national general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav has also been re-elected.

BSP’s Ramji Gautam, too, has been elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha. Barring union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and SP’s Ram Gopal Yadav, all other candidates personally collected their election certificates. Uttar Pradesh finance minister Suresh Khanna and BJP leader JPS Rathore collected the certificate for Puri. SP MLA Rakesh Singh collected Ram Gopal Yadav’s election certificate.

The election of all the 10 candidates unopposed had become imminent on Friday when the returning officer upheld the nomination papers of BSP candidate Ramji Gautam and rejected the papers of Samajwadi Party-backed independent candidate Prakash Bajaj. Four BSP MLAs, who proposed Gautam’s name, had later turned rebels and said they wanted to withdraw as proposers for the BSP candidate.