The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday bagged all three Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh, after Congress leader Meenakshi Natarajan’s nomination was rejected earlier this week, with the opposition party terming the developments as “theft”, “hijacking” of the democratic process and “betrayal” of the people.
The three BJP candidates were among the 22 candidates elected unopposed in the biennial elections.
Rajneesh Agrawal, Tarun Chugh and Mahesh Kivat were elected unopposed
After completion of nomination withdrawal process, Returning Officer Arvind Sharma announced that BJP candidates Rajneesh Agrawal, Tarun Chugh and Mahesh Kivat were elected unopposed from Madhya Pradesh and handed over election certificates to them at the assembly complex.
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This came on the day the Supreme Court refused to stop the polling process, but agreed to hear Natarajan’s petition on Friday.
Kivat credited the party’s organization with its rise. “It can only happen in the BJP that a small worker from Bundelkhand like me becomes a Rajya Sabha MP,” he said.
“When a theft happens, and everyone is involved in this theft — not just the state, but also the central government… the Election Commission…,” Digvijaya Singh, a senior Congress leader, told PTI.
In Rajasthan, BJP candidates Satish Poonia and Alka Singh Gurjar were declared elected, along with Congress candidate Neeraj Dhangi, after no other candidate remained in the fray.
Read also | Congress MP Pawan Khera is now a Rajya Sabha MP after being elected “unanimously” along with Karg and others from Karnataka.
In Karnataka, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge won re-election to the Rajya Sabha along with party colleagues Pawan Khera and Mansoor Ali Khan, while BJP candidate M Nagaraja was also elected unopposed after the nomination of an independent candidate was rejected during scrutiny.
In Arunachal Pradesh, BJP leader Tai Tagak was elected unopposed to the lone Rajya Sabha seat.
In Andhra Pradesh, the ruling NDA bagged all four seats, with TDP candidates Pashyam Ramakrishna, Chintakaila Vijay and Sana Satish Babu, along with Jana Sena candidate Lingamaneni Ramesh, declared elected.
In Gujarat, all four Rajya Sabha candidates of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party – Raghubhai Shukla, Mansih Parmar, Mukeshbhai Rathwa and Jitendra Kangaria – were elected unopposed.
Former Manipur BJP president Adhikarimayom Sharda Devi has been declared elected from the state, while in Odisha, the party’s Debashish Samantray has made it to the Senate. In Meghalaya, NPP’s James Sangma, brother of CM Conrad Sangma, was elected to the state’s only Rajya Sabha seat.
Voting, if necessary, was scheduled to take place on June 18. But with the number of candidates matching the number of vacant seats, balloting became unnecessary, officials said.
