NEW DELHI: Forty candidates were elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday at the close of nominations, 11 of them from Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling BJP has bagged 8 seats and the Samajwadi Party three.
Among the prominent winners from UP were Congress leader Kapil Sibal and Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Choudhary.
Former Union Minister P Chidambaram, too, has been re-elected from TN; he had won last time from Maharashtra.
Polling is to take place on June 10 for 17 other seats in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka.
It will be a thriller in all four states The BJP has fielded additional candidates besides those from the seats it can win -- Dhananjay Mahadik in Maharashtra and Lahar Singh in Karnataka while backing independents Subhash Chandra of ZEE TV from Rajasthan and Kartikeya Sharma in Haryana.
Bihar has sent five unopposed, including RJD chief's eldest daughter Misa Bharti for the second term.
AAP's Sant Balbir Singh Sichewala, an environmentalist, and social worker Vikramjit Singh Sahni have been elected from Punjab; Congress general secretary Rajeev Shukla and secretary Ranjit Ranjan have cruised through from Chhattisgarh.
In Rajasthan, the Congress has fielded general secretaries Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik, as also Pramod Tiwari; the election of the third candidate is tricky because Subhash Chandra is getting the backing of the BJP. Last time, Chandra had won from Haryana because of rejection of some Congress votes. Tiwari needs the vote of every independent MLA who is backing the Ashok Gehlot government.
In Haryana, factionalism in Congress has cast a shadow on general secretary Ajay Maken’s fortunes, as the party with 31 MLA has just enough strength to see him through, but Kartikeya Sharma will make it tough for him.
It is chaos in Karnataka which has four seats where both the Congress and the BJP have fielded "extra" candidates, each requiring 45 votes.
With 119 MLAs in the State Assembly, the BJP's Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and actor Jaggesh will sail through, leaving 29 surplus votes.
The Congress, with around 69 MLAs, can easily get former Union minister Jairam Ramesh elected, and therefore both the Congress and the BJP are wooing the Janata Dal(S) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda, as it has 31 MLAs and five of them have decided to defy the party whip. The JD(S) has also fielded a candidate, Kupendra Reddy.
