Patna: Sushil Kumar Modi, senior BJP leader and former deputy chief minister of Bihar, was on Monday was elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha.
Returning officer Sanjay Agarwal handed over the certificate of election to Sushil Modi in presence of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, two deputy chief ministers and the cabinet colleagues of Nitish.
Monday was the last date for withdrawal of nomination papers and since Sushil Modi was the only candidate left in the fray,he was declared elected unopposed.
With this, Sushil Modi now has the distinction of becoming members of all the four Houses of the state legislature and the Parliament.
He was elected to Bihar assembly from Patna Central in 1990, was in 2004 elected to the Lok Sabha from Bhagalpur, and since 2006, he had been a member of the Bihar Legislative Council.
Immediately after his election, Sushil Modi affirmed his faith on NItish Kumar and claimed that he had learnt a lot while working with Nitish as his deputy for 15 years.
He recalled that he had always preferred the suggestion of Nitish Kumar and had ignored the recommendation of Pranab Mukherjee, who was then the union finance minister.
Sushil Modi said Mukherjee had asked him to head the group of ministers on GST, which he declined, but later Nitish Kumar telephoned him and asked him to accept the offer. It was then that he relented and obeyed Nitish
Sushil Modi claimed that it was his privilege to work under Nitish Kumar for 15 years as deputy chief minister of Bihar and that he had contributed to the development of Bihar.
"My contribution may be small, but I did try to develop the state," said the former Bihar deputy chief minister.
Sushil Modi said that as an MP now, he will focus on furthering the development of the state by negotiating with different ministries at the Union.
He would take up with different departments the pending issues of Bihar, the BJP leader said.
Sushil Modi would be given an official send-off by the state unit of the BJP at party headquarters on Tuesday morning.
The by-election was caused following the death of Union Food and Consumer Affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan, who was elected in 2019 with BJP support on the seat vacated by the Union Law and Justice minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Ravi Shankar Prasad was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Patna Saheb constitutency.
Neither the Grand Alliance nor the LJP fielded any candidate, which led to Sushil Mod getting elected uncontested.
