Four candidates — BJP president Amit Shah, Union Minister Smriti Irani, Balvantsinh Rajput, and Ahmed Patel — were in the fray to three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat.
Less than 24 hours after its candidate Ahmed Patel pulled off a close win in a bitterly contested Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat, the opposition Congress expelled eight of its MLAs, including former chief minister Shankersinh Vaghela, for cross-voting, even as the BJP said it would challenge the poll outcome in court.
Four candidates — BJP president Amit Shah, Union Minister Smriti Irani, Balvantsinh Rajput, and Ahmed Patel — were in the fray to three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat. While Shah and Irani won comfortably by securing 46 votes each, Patel won the third seat by winning 44 votes.
The high stakes election was no less than a rollercoaster ride, with the BJP appearing to have the upper hand initially.
Cross-voting by eight of its MLAs seemed to have come as a body blow to the Congress's chances. However, two of these votes were declared invalid by the Election Commission, after the Congress complained that the two MLAs disclosed their choice to BJP leaders.
The hearing in the complaint, which saw top BJP and Congress leaders visiting the Election Commission thrice each, delayed the counting of votes by almost seven hours.
The counting of votes started just before midnight, and the results were declared at 2 am. Amidst all the odds, the Congress, which had been hit by an exodus of MLAs and cross-voting, somehow managed to hold on to its seat.
Forty-three Congress MLAs voted for Patel, but there are three non-Congress MLAs who too are claiming to have voted for him.
Immediately after he was declared the winner, Patel wrote on Twitter, 'Satyamev Jayate'.
"This is not just my victory. It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power, muscle power and abuse of state machinery," he wrote in another tweet.
The BJP, however, doesn't seem to be in the mood to accept defeat yet.
The party's losing candidate Balvantsinh Rajput said the party would challenge in Supreme Court the EC decision to invalidate two votes.
"Congress's polling agent Shaktisinh Gohil had provoked the two Congress MLAs and had even tried to snatch the ballot paper from one of them," Rajput said, adding that the EC invalidated the two votes under Congress's pressure.
Congress workers burst crackers and held celebrations at several places in the state.
Late on Wednesday, the Congress expelled eight MLAs for six years for violating the party's whip in the RS election by not voting for Patel.
The eight MLAs are Shankersinh Vaghela, his son Mahendrasinh Vaghela, Amit Chaudhary, Bholabhai Gohel, Raghavji Patel, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, CK Raulji and Karamsi Patel.
"We will approach the Speaker and demand action against these MLAs as per the anti-defection law," Shailesh Parmar, Congress's chief whip in the Assembly, told DNA.
Six other MLAs, who had quit Congress in the last week of July, have also been expelled for six years, the party's spokesperson Manish Doshi said. The six are Balvantsinh Rajput, Prahlad Patel, Tejshree Patel, Ramsinh Parmar, Mansinh Chauhan and Chhana Chaudhary
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