Gandhinagar:
All four Rajya Sabha candidates of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat on Thursday as no other nominee was in the fray.
Main Opposition Congress did not field its candidate and no other contestant was in the race.
The winning candidates are Rajubhai Shukla, Mansinh Parmar, Mukeshbhai Rathwa and Jitendra Kanjariya.
Returning Officer and Gujarat Legislative Assembly Secretary Chetan Pandya officially declared them winners after noting that following the expiry of the deadline to withdraw nominations on Thursday, only four candidates remained in the fray for as many seats.
“As the time for withdrawal of nomination papers ended on June 11, there remained only four candidates contesting for four seats. Returning Officer Chetan Pandya declared all these four candidates as elected unopposed,” the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha secretariat said.
The biennial elections to the Upper House of Parliament were necessitated as the six-year term of four sitting Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat — Rambhai Mokariya, Narhari Amin, and Ramilaben Bara (all from BJP), and Shaktisinh Gohil (Congress) — is ending on June 21. Assembly members formed the electoral college for the polls.
Gohil is the lone Congress member from Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha.
Shukla, 62, is currently in-charge of the BJP’s Surendranagar district unit. He had earlier served as president of the Kadi municipality and general secretary of the Mehsana district BJP.
Rathwa (39), a tribal leader from Chhotaudepur district, currently serves as general secretary of the BJP’s district unit. Earlier, he was vice-president of the BJP’s youth wing.
Parmar (45), who hails from Gir Somnath district, is the BJP OBC Morcha’s Gujarat unit president.
Another prominent OBC leader, Kanjariya (39), hails from Devbhumi Dwarka district. He had earlier served as a member of a district panchayat executive committee.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
