BJP, AGP candidates elected unopposed to two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam

One nominee each of the BJP and its ally AGP were Friday declared elected unopposed to two Rajya Sabha seats which will fall vacant when the tenure of former prime minister Manmohan Singh and another Congress member from Assam ends next month.

Returning officer Amarendra Deka declared Kamakhya Prasad Tasa of the BJP and Birendra Prasad Baishya of the AGP elected unopposed after the time for withdrawal of nomination papers was over.

The terms of Singh and another Congress MP Santius Kujur end on June 14. Polling for the two seats was scheduled for June 7.

The opposition Congress and AIUDF had decided not to contest the Rajya Sabha polls as they do not have the required number of members in the state assembly to vote for their nominees, sources in the two parties said.

The former prime minister has represented Assam in the Upper House for five terms since 1991 when then chief minister Hiteswar Saikia had offered his house on rent to him.

Following his election, Singh was appointed finance minister in the P V Narasimha Rao government.

He was the leader of the opposition between 1998 and 2004 and he helmed the UPA-I and UPA-II governments till 2014.

The last time that he got elected from Assam was in May 2013 when the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government was in power in the state.

Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur are voters of Dispur assembly constituency here and they had exercised their franchise in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections.

The two newly elected Rajya Sabha MPs were parliamentarians earlier as well.

Tea tribe leader Kamakhya Prasad Tasa was an MP from Jorhat in the last Lok Sabha, while Birendra Prasad Baishya was a Union minister during 1996-98 and a Rajya Sabha MP from 2008-14.