RS polls: Victory for Kapil Sibal

Union ministers Venkaiah Naidu, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Birendra Singh and Congress leader Kapil Sibal were among those elected to the Rajya Sabha in elections to 27 seats of the Upper House held in seven states on Saturday.

In a shocker for the Congress in Haryana, media baron and BJP-backed independent candidate Subhash Chandra defeated Congress chief Sonia Gandhi-backed independent nominee R K Anand, who also had the support of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).

The votes of 14 Congress MLAs were invalid. A rebellion was suspected as a majority of the 17 Congress MLAs, owing allegiance to former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had previously opposed Anand.

In Uttar Pradesh, Sibal, former telecom minister and a leading lawyer, emerged triumphant against BJP-backed independent nominee Preeti Mahapatra. Her dramatic entry into the scene had forced the election in Uttar Pradesh.

The results showed that the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had backed Congress nominees in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, chose not to transfer its surplus votes to any other party candidate in Uttar Pradesh.

Besides Sibal, the others who made it to the Rajya Sabha from the state are: Amar Singh, Beni Prasad Verma, Kuwar Rewati Raman Singh, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad, Sukhram Singh Yadav, Sanjay Seth and Surendra Nagar (Samajwadi Party); Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Sidharth (both BSP) and Shiv Pratap Shukla (BJP).

Of the 27 Rajya Sabha seats at stake in Saturday’s voting, 11 went to the BJP, 6 to Congress, 7 to Samajwadi Party, 2 to BSP and one Independent. Thirty of the 57 seats in the current round of biennial elections were decided without a contest last week.

In Madhya Pradesh, BJP candidates M J Akbar and Anil Dave and Congress’s Vivek Tankha were elected to the Rajya Sabha while an independent candidate backed by the BJP was defeated.

The BJP’s bid to spoil the Congress candidate’s chances by fielding party leader Vinod Gotia as an Independent candidate did not bear fruit. BSP supremo Mayawati had issued a whip to its four MLAs to vote for Tankha.

Naidu thanks Rajasthan

In Rajasthan, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and BJP vice-president O P Mathur and two other party nominees were elected. The Congress-backed Independent candidate Kamal Morarka was defeated.

In Jharkhand, the Congress failed in its attempt to secure victory for Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) candidate Basant Soren, son of party supremo Shibu Soren.
In Uttarakhand, Congress’s Pradeep Tamta defeated Independent candidate Anil Goel to win the lone Rajya Sabha seat, becoming the first Dalit from the hill state to make it to the Upper House.

 Tamta needed just two additional votes apart from his party’s 26 votes and ally PDF’s six votes.