10 candidates, including 8 of BJP elected unopposed in Rajya Sabha

Lucknow:After much political drama between BSP and SP, Election Commission on Monday declared ten candidates elected unopposed in the biennial Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

The announcement was made by the Returning officer(RO) after expiry of the last date for withdrawals of the nomination papers.

The eight of the BJP candidates, who got elected were union minister Hardeep Puri, BJP general secretary  Arun Singh, senior BJP leader Haridwar Dubey, former UP DGP Brij Lal, Neeraj Shekhar, Geeta Shakya, BL Verma and Seema Dwivedi. The others who also got elected were SP leader Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav and BSP's Ramjee Gautam.With this win, BJP wrested  3 seats from SP and one each from BSP and Congress.

During the scrutiny on  October  29, there was a political drama after 5 BSP MLAs, who had proposed their support to Ramjee Gautam, withdrew and they openly revolted against the party leadership and even met SP president Akhilesh Yadav.

Even after revolt by the five proposers of the BSP candidate Ramjee Gautam, his nominations were found correct but the Samajwadi party backed independent Prakash Bajaj's nomination was rejected over anomaly in the name of his proposer.

Independent candidate Prakash Bajaj ,whose nominations was rejected had moved the Supreme court but today his plea was rejected and was asked to approach the Allahabad High Court.

The 5 BSP MLAs who have revolted against the party candidate are-- Aslam Choudhury, Aslam Rainee, Mujtaba  Siddique, Hakim Lal Bind and Govind Jatav. Along with these five, 2 more BSP MLAs were suspended by the party for anti-party activities.

The members whose term would end on November 25, 2020, are union minister and BJP member Hardeep Singh Puri, BJP national general secretary Arun Singh, BJP's Neeraj Shekhar,  SP's Ram Gopal Yadav, Ravi Prakash Verma, Dr Chandrapal Singh Yadav and Javed Ali Khan, BSP's Veer Singh and Rajaram and Congress member P L Punia.(UNI)