Some big names made it to the Rajya Sabha in today’s round of elections, for 18 seats in five states. With 21 others having been already elected unopposed earlier, that leaves another 10 seats in that House to be filled this year, due next month.
Also elected from Karnataka for the BJP were its ex-national head, Venkaiah Naidu, and Ayanur Manjunath. The Congress managed to only get one, in party national general secretary Oscar Fernandes. Its second candidate, T V Maruthi, a silk merchant from Bangalore, lost.
Rajasthan elected two big names, Union commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma and noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, the former on a Congress ticket and the latter on a BJP one. Ashk Ali Tak (Congress) and V P Singh (BJP) also won. Former Union minister Santosh Bagrodia, fighting as an independent candidate, failed in his expectation of securing rebel votes from both rival camps and lost.
Former Union cabinet minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, head of the Lok Janshakti Party, was elected from Bihar with support from the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal, which also managed to elect one of its own, Ram Kripal Yadav. The BJP got one of its national spokesmen, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, a former Union minister, elected. Another two seats were won by the ruling Janta Dal (United), to which the BJP is also allied. Upendra Khushwaha and R C P Sinha won for the JD(U).
Paswan is entering the Rajya Sabha for the first time, having been in the Lok Sabha from 1977 till last year (barring the 1984-89 period). He had lost his seat in last year’s general elections.
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B G Uday, a businessman from Karnataka (his father was state police chief there in the 1980s), had unexpectedly filed his nomination from Bihar, getting enough MLA support to be able to do so. However, his and his backers’ political calculations went wrong and he lost.
Elections were also being held to three seats in Orissa and two in Jharkhand. In Jharkhand, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s K D Singh was elected, as was Dheeraj Prasad Sahu of the Congress. In Orissa, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik delivered a thrashing to his opponents, by getting all his three Biju Janata Dal candidates elected — Pyari Mohan Mahapatra, Sashibhushan Behera and Baishnab Parida. The main opposition party, the Congress, had backed an independent, Tara Ranjan Patnaik, who lost.
Four MLAs of the BJP — two in Rajasthan and one each in Bihar and Orissa — were known to have not voted for the party candidates and the high command appears to be contemplating severe disciplinary action on them.