Election to four Rajya Sabha seats from Rajasthan will be held here tomorrow with ruling BJP making all efforts for a clean sweep whereas the opposition Congress has extended support to independent candidate Kamal Morarka.
A candidate requires 41 votes to win. In the house of 200, the ruling BJP has 160 members and Congress 24. National Peoples Party has four, BSP has three, National Unionist Zamindara Party has two and seven are independents.
Union ministerVenkaiahNaidu, BJP's national Vice President Om Prakash Mathur, former RBI official Ramkumar Sharma and member of erstwhile Dungarpur royal family Harsh Vardhan Singh have been fielded by BJP whereas Morarka filed nomination papers as independent candidate.
Due to presence of Morarka, polling has become necessary. The results will also be declared tomorrow.
BJP has claimed the support of two legislators of National Unionist Zamindara Party and three independent MLAs who attended its training programme yesterday at a hotel.
Congress's stgate unit announced its support to former union minister Morarka on the directions of AICC and issued a whip to the party MLAs to vote for him. It is expecting support of independent MLAs and other non-BJP parties.
NUZP MLAs Kamini Jindal and Sona Devi Bawri participated in the BJP training camp and a dummy voting at a hotel yesterday where other BJP MLAs are present since Wednesday evening.
"A dummy voting was conducted yesterday in the hotel in which besides the party MLAs, NUZP MLAs and three independent MLAs Randhir Singh Bhinder, Nand Kishore Maharia and Narendra Kumar also participated," according to a statement.
BJP MLAs will go for polling directly from the hotel tomorrow.
Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi said that the party will support Morarka and a whip was issued to Congress MLAs in a meeting last night.
"We were already in mood to support Morarka but the formal decision was taken in a meeting yesterday," Dudi said.
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Meanwhile, the Rajasthan High Court today rejected the appeal of BSP MLA B L Kushwah, who is in judicial custody in connection with a murder case, seeking permission to cast his vote in the Rajya Sabha polls.
With this development, 199 MLAs would cast their vote in the RS poll tomorrow.
Kushwaha has been in jail since October, 2014.
