With the Rajya Sabha polls all party's want to prove their strength by fielding candidates to the upper house.
BJP yielded to JD(U) for the sixth seat in Bihar in the Rajya Sabha elections for which 45 candidates including a rebel BJP nominee fielded by party strongman B S Yeddyurappa in Karnataka filed their papers on Monday.
Nominations for the biennial polls to be held on March 30 closed today. The last date for withdrawal is March 22.
Bihar's ruling alliance partners JD(U) and BJP will now contest four and two seats respectively. After getting two, BJP wanted one more seat but JD(U) refused to concede.
Significantly, BJP denied a ticket to its Deputy Leader in the Upper House SS Ahluwalia for another term from Jharkand since ally JMM insisted on its candidate for the lone seat.
Senior Congress leader Abdul Mannan filed his papers despite Trinamool Congress' decision not to support its junior coalition partner in West Bengal and renominating Union Minister Mukul Roy and giving tickets to three journalists.
Ruling out the possibility of Mannan withdrawing his nomination, Congress asserted his party would neither indulge in horse trading, nor take support from the Left Front and said it was working on a "strategy".
For a lone vacant seat in Uttarakhand, Mahendra Singh Mahra, a close confidante of rebel Congress leader Harish Rawat, filed his papers after he was chosen in an attempt to defuse the rebellion in the party led by the Union Minister.
BJP too tried to exploit the fluid political situation by filing nominations of its two leaders Anil Goyal and Naresh Bansal.
BJP's Arun Jaitley(Gujarat), Telugu megastar Chiranjeevi, former Union Minister Renuka Choudhary of Congress(Andhra Pradesh), Faggan Singh Kulaste, a cash-for-vote case accused, Najma Heptullah, both BJP, and Satyavrat Chaturvedi of Congress(Madhya Pradesh) were among other candidates who submitted their papers today.
Former Indian hockey captain Dilip Tirkey, a ruling BJD nominee, was among seven persons who filed their papers in Odisha.
Upping the ante, Yeddyurappa fielded BJ Puttaswamy, who served as Political Secretary when he was the Chief Minister and continued in his post under his successor DV Sadananda Gowda.
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