- Three BJP candidates including External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, were declared elected “uncontested” to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.
- For S Jaishankar, diplomat-turned-politician, this will be the second term in the Rajya Sabha from the BJP-ruled state.
- In Bengal, besides O’Brien, other TMC leaders were Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Dola Sen, who got elected to the Rajya Sabha.
Three candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, were on Monday declared elected “uncontested” to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, officials said. Apart from Mr. Jaishankar, the other two BJP candidates elected to the Upper House of Parliament for a 6-year term are Kesridevsinh Jhala and Babubhai Desai.
For the career diplomat-turned-politician, who was inducted into the Union Cabinet in 2019, this will be the second term in the Rajya Sabha from the BJP-ruled state. Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala, and Desai Babubhai Jesangbhai, have been declared elected uncontested. Desai and Jhala have been elected to the Upper House of Parliament for the first time.
In Bengal, besides O’Brien, other TMC leaders who got elected to the Rajya Sabha on Monday were Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Dola Sen. The three newcomers on the TMC list were Bangla Sanskriti Mancha president Samirul Islam, the party’s Alipurduar district unit president and tribal leader Prakash Chik Baraik, and RTI activist and party spokesperson Saket Gokhale.
Gokhale has been elected in a by-election — necessitated by the resignation of former Goa chief minister Luizinho Faleiro as a TMC MP in April. His term will be a limited one.
Monday (July 17) was the last date to withdraw nomination forms, and if required, polling was to take place on July 24. The Opposition Congress had announced it would not field candidates for polls to the three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat as it did not have enough MLAs in the 182-member Assembly.
Jaishankar filed his nomination form on July 10, while Jhala and Desai submitted their papers on July 12. Two sitting Raya Sabha MPs from Gujarat, Jugalji Thakor and Dinesh Anavadiya — whose term was to end soon — were not renominated by the BJP which instead fielded Jhala and Desai this time.
The saffron party had won a record 156 seats in the Assembly polls held late last year, while the Congress saw its worst performance since the state was formed by managing to get just 17 seats.
(With inputs from agencies)
