Biennial elections were held to fill five Rajya Sabha and seven Legislative Council seats.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Y Satyanarayana Chowdary have been elected unanimously to Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh. Two other candidates T G Venkatesh and V Vijaysai Reddy have also been elected unopposed in the biennial election to the Council of States.
V Sunanda Reddy, who filed nomination as a dummy candidate on behalf of the YSR Congress, withdrew her papers yesterday, paving the way for the unanimous election of the four main candidates.
Prabhu is a BJP nominee supported by the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP). Chowdary and Venkatesh are TDP candidates, while Vijaysai is the lone opposition YSRC nominee.
BIHAR:
JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, noted Supreme Court lawyer Ram Jethmalani and RJD chief Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti were among five candidates declared elected unopposed for Rajya Sabha from Bihar on Friday.
Jethmalani, a former BJP MP and law minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, was elected to Rajya Sabha from RJD. He is presently pleading RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's case in the multi-crore fodder scam in Ranchi.
With this, the tally of parties for the 16 Upper House seats from Bihar will be JD(U) 9, BJP 5 and RJD 2.
Except for Jethmalani all the four victorious Rajya Sabha candidates collected certificate from Bihar Legistive Assembly Secretary-cum-Returning Officer Ram Shrestha Rai. Jethmalani's certificate was collected by Bhola Yadav, RJD MLA and a close confidante of Lalu Prasad, Rai told PTI.
Besides, all seven candidates- that included five of Grand Secular Alliance while two BJP nominees- were elected unopposed for Legislative Council polls.
Grand Alliance nominees who were for the Legislative Council included- Gulam Rasool Baliyavi, C P Sinha (JD-U), S M Qamar Alam, Ranvijay Singh (RJD) and Tanveer Akhtar (Congress). The two BJP nominees who were elected to the upper house included Arjun Sahni and Vinod Narayan Jha.
TAMIL NADU:
Six Rajya Sabha nominees, four of ruling AIADMK and two belonging to DMK, were today elected unopposed to the Upper House from Tamil Nadu.
AIADMK candidates R Vaithilingam, A Navaneethakrishnan, A Vijayakumar, former Union Minister S R Balasubramoniyan, DMK nominees R S Bharathi and T K S Elangovan were declared elected to fill the vacancies of the six members who will retire on June 29 this year, Assembly Secretary and Returning Officer, A M P Jamaludeen said in a statement.
Today was the last date of withdrawal of nominations. With the election of four MPs, the strength of ruling AIADMK will go up to 12 from the present 11 in Rajya Sabha.
There will be no change in the number of DMK MPs which will continue to be four. The elections were called to fill the vacancies of six MPs to Rajya Sabha from Tamil Nadu.
(With PTI inputs)
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