New Delhi Elections for 60 Rajya Sabha seats across the country began on Tuesday.
The Congress is contesting 17 seats in the elections, which will see Railway Minister Lalu Prasad’s RJD party battling with Cabinet colleague Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party in Bihar.
The BJP’s main contestants are Kalraj Mishra and Vinay Katiyar from Uttar Pradesh and Sushma Swaraj and Vikram Verma from Madhya Pradesh.
Polls for ten Rajya Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh might show surprising results, as the Supreme Court has ordered that 37 rebel BSP MLAs would vote as a separate group.
There are 13 candidates in the election but predicting who would win is difficult because the 37 rebel MLAs, who callthemselves the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal (LBD), are free to vote according their choice.
There is no whip in the Rajya Sabha elections and MLAs casting votes have to show their ballots to authorised agents of their parties.
An MLA’s ballot will be cancelled if he or she refuses to show it. As the LBD is not a recognised political party, it won’t have an agent and its MLAs do not have to show their ballots.
The BJP has allotted all its 83 votes to Katiyar and Mishra though the two together need only 74 first preference votes to sail through.
As a result of the BJP decision, the minimum number of first preference votes required by other candidates had come down from 37 to 36 for an outright win.
Comments
0 comment