NEW DELHI: Amid high drama in Gujarat and Manipur, biennial Rajya Sabha elections to fill up 24 vacancies saw the BJP strengthening its position in the House on Friday.
The NDA now will have about 100 MPs of its own in the Upper House, up from its current tally of 91.
In Gujarat, which had witnessed defection ahead of the elections, counting was stopped for a while as the Congress demanded that the Election Commission invalidate two BJP votes on different grounds.
But the BJP had the last laugh as it finally won three of the four seats, wresting one of them from the Congress.
Similarly in Manipur, BJP’s Leishemba Sanajaoba won the lone seat.
The Manipur High Court had ordered Speaker Khemchand Singh to “restraint” the entry into the Assembly of seven Congress MLAs facing disqualification. But four of them took part in voting on Friday as their cases were disposed of on the day.
Three others were not allowed to cast votes as their cases were still pending.
The court had on Thursday said “the order/judgment reserved today (Thursday) by the Hon’ble Speaker, shall not be pronounced by him till tomorrow (Friday).”
The sole consolation for the Congress was in Rajasthan, where Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot managed to limit the BJP to just one seat amid allegations of horse-trading against the latter.
In Madhya Pradesh that saw major defections, the BJP won two seats. It also won a seat in Jharkhand and has already pocketed two seats in Karnataka and one in Arunachal Pradesh. The YSRCP Congress in Andhra Pradesh swept all four seats in Andhra Pradesh.
Prominent leaders who will enter Rajya Sabha for the first time include Jyotiraditya Scindia, Mallikarjun Kharge, M Thambi Durai (former Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha), K C Venugopal and K R Suresh Reddy (former Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of composite Andhra Pradesh).
In Rajasthan, both the Congress nominees, K C Venugopal and Neeraj Dangi, won impressively while the BJP could manage a win only for Rajendra Gehlot.
The BJP’s second candidate Onkar Singh Lakhawat got just 20 votes. K C Venugopal with 64 votes got the maximum support and his junior colleague Neeraj Dangi secured 59. Rajendra Gehlot got 54.