Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram among 41 elected to RS unopposed

New Delhi, June 3

In all, 41 candidates in 11 states were elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday, with a contest to be held for the remaining 16 seats in four states — Rajasthan, Karnataka (four seats each), Haryana (two seats) and Maharashtra (six seats) on June 10

Among the 41 nominees are former Union Ministers P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal.

Friday was the last day for the withdrawal of candidature for the June 10 elections to the Upper House.

Meanwhile, voting will also not be held in Uttar Pradesh as all 11 nominees were declared elected unopposed. In all, 12 candidates had filed their nomination. However, the candidature of one Independent was rejected.

The 11 elected members include eight from the BJP — Laxmikant Bajpai, Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, Surendra Nagar, K Laxman, Mithilesh Kumar, Baburam Nishad, Sangeeta Yadav and Darshana Singh.

Former Congress leader Kapil Sibal was elected as an Independent candidate with the Samajwadi Party support along with RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary and Javed Ali (SP).

In Madhya Pradesh, Congress’ Vivek Tankha and BJP’s Sumitra Valmiki and Kavita Patidar were also elected unopposed. For Tankha, this will be his second consecutive term in the House, while Valmiki and Patidar are newcomers.

In Chhattisgarh, Congress nominees Rajeev Shukla and Ranjeet Ranjan were elected unopposed. “The deadline for the withdrawal of nominations ended this afternoon and the two candidates were elected unopposed,” state Assembly Secretary Dinesh Sharma said.

Tamil Nadu saw all six candidates, including former Union Minister P Chidambaram, sail through unopposed. They were the only six persons to file nominations for as many seats.

Apart from Chidambaram (Congress), others elected are ‘Thanjai’ S Kalyanasundaram, R Girirajan, and KRN Rajeshkumar (all from the DMK) and C Ve Shanmugam and R Dharmar from the AIADMK.

From Jharkhand, JMM candidate Mahua Maji and BJP’s Aditya Sahu were elected unopposed to the Upper House.