Ravneet Bittu, Kiran Choudhry, 9 others elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha
New Delhi, August 27
Union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurian were elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday along with senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi and former minister Upendra Kushwaha.
Other candidates who were declared winner after the deadline for the withdrawal of nomination ended at 3 pm were BJP leaders Kiran Choudhry (Haryana), Mamata Mohanata (Odisha) and Manan Kumar Mishra (Bihar).
Bypolls were announced on 12 seats that fell vacant as the sitting members, including Union ministers Piyush Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal and Jyotiraditya Scindia, were elected to Lok Sabha recently.
Four candidates -- the BJP's Dhairyasheel Patil and NCP's Nitin Patil (both from Maharashtra), and Rameswar Teli and Mission Ranjan Das (both from Assam) -- were declared winner on Monday.
Thus, while 11 candidates have been elected unopposed, the winner from the seat in Tripura will be decided by voting on September 3.
Tripura BJP president Rajib Bhattacharjee is up against CPI(M)'s former MLA Sudhan Das from the state.
Senior Congress leader and Supreme Court lawyer Abhishek Singhvi was declared unopposed from Telangana on Tuesday.
Union minister of state and BJP leader Ravneet Singh Bittu was elected unopposed as a member of Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan where three candidates had filed nominations.
One of them was a BJP dummy candidate. The nomination paper of independent candidate Babita Wadhwani was cancelled during scrutiny on August 22.
BJP's dummy candidate Sunil Kothari withdrew his nomination on Friday, making Ravneet Singh Bittu as the only candidate in the bye-election.
Rajasthan Legislative Assembly principal secretary and election officer Mahavir Prasad Sharma presented a certificate to Yogendra Singh Tanwar, the authorised election agent of Bittu.
The opposition Congress had decided not to field a candidate in the by-election.
The election was held after Congress's KC Venugopal resigned as RS MP when he was elected in the Lok Sabha polls.
From Madhya Pradesh, Union minister and BJP nominee George Kurian was declared elected unopposed by the returning officer. The vacancy was created following Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia's election to the Lok Sabha in June.
Besides Kurian, two others, including state BJP vice-president Kantdev Singh, had filed their nomination papers. Singh, who hails from Singrauli, had submitted his nomination papers as a dummy candidate of the saffron party.
The BJP's Kiran Choudhry, who switched over from the Congress, had filed her nomination for the bypoll from Haryana. And being the lone candidate in the contest in the state, she was declared elected unopposed. PTI
