Bhubaneswar: All the four Biju Janata Dal (BJD) candidates were Wednesday elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed as opposition BJP and Congress did not field any nominee for the polls scheduled to be held on March 26.
Odisha Assembly Secretary-cum Returning Officer for the Rajya Sabha polls, Dasarathi Satpathy announced the election of the four BJD candidates – Subhas Singh, Munna Khan, Sujit Kumar and Mamata Mahanta.
The announcement came after the time for the withdrawal of nomination papers came to an end at 3.00pm. Satpathy also handed over certificates to the victorious BJD candidates at the Odisha Assembly.
Though four Independent candidates had filed nomination papers, their candidature were rejected for not having the signatures of 10 MLAs as proposers.
While the Congress could not field any candidate as it lacked at least 10 proposers to back its nominee, the BJP hesitated to contest the Rajya Sabha polls as it has only 23 members in the Odisha Assembly. A candidate required at least 29 first-preference votes to win the election.
While the ruling BJD has 113 MLAs in the 147-member House, the BJP has 23, followed by nine of the Congress and one of the CPI(M). There is also an Independent legislator.
Under such circumstances, the ruling BJD’s nominees were comfortably elected to the upper house of Parliament.
Subhas, an OBC, is a trade unionist and Munna, a party old-timer and close associate of late BJD founder Biju Patnaik, comes from the Muslim community.
Kumar, who was an adviser to the Special Development Council, is a general category candidate and hails from Kalahandi district while Mamata is a BJD women’s wing member from Mayurbhanj district.
Four of the 10 Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha are falling vacant April 2, after completion of the tenures of BJD lawmakers – Anubhav Mohanty, Narendra Kumar Swain and Sarojini Hembram and Congress member Ranjib Biswal.
PNN & Agencies