NEW DELHI, July 17: Four candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and six nominees of the Trinamool Congress were on Monday declared elected “uncontested” to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat and West Bengal, officials said.
While the BJP had three from Gujarat and one seat from West Bengal, all the six TMC seats came from West Bengal. Apart from Jaishankar, the other two BJP candidates elected to the Upper House of Parliament for a 6-year term are Kesridevsinh Jhala and Babubhai Desai.
Six TMC nominees and one candidate from the BJP were elected unopposed from West Bengal. There were only seven candidates for seven seats in the state and no elections were held.
For the career diplomat-turned-politician S Jaishankar, who was inducted into the Union Cabinet in 2019, this will be the second term in the Rajya Sabha from the BJP-ruled state. Returning Officer Reeta Mehta said the three candidates have been declared as being elected “uncontested”.
Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala, Desai Babubhai Jesangbhai, and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Krishnaswami “have been declared elected uncontested on July 17,” the RO said in a declaration on the National eVidhan Application website. Monday was the last date to withdraw nomination forms, and if required, polling was to take place on July 24.
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.
‘Certificate of Election’ was given to Trinamool Congress leaders Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Dola Sen, Saket Gokhale, Prakash Chick Baraik and Samirul Islam in the West Bengal State Assembly. A representative of Derek O’ Brien collected the certificate on his behalf. BJP’s Ananta Roy was also elected unopposed today.
(Manas Dasgupta)