Nadda, Sonia among 41 elected unopposed to RS; Karnataka, Himachal, UP polling next

New Delhi, Feb 20 (PTI) Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.

The BJP has won the highest number of 20 seats, followed by the Congress (6), Trinamool Congress (4), YSR Congress (3), RJD (2), BJD (2) and NCP, Shiv Sena, BRS and JD(U) one each.

As there were no other candidates in the fray on these 41 seats, the respective returning officers declared them winners on the last date of withdrawal of nominations.

The biennial elections were announced for February 27 in 56 seats. While 50 members will retire on April 2, six will do so on April 3. Now polling will be held for 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh, four in Karnataka and one seat in Himachal Pradesh from 9 am to 4 pm and counting will be held on the same day from 5 pm onwards.

Nadda and the party's other nominees Jasvantsinh Parmar, Mayank Nayak and diamond baron Govindbhai Dholakia were declared winners from Gujarat. The Congress, which has only 15 MLAs, and other opposition parties had preferred not to put up candidates against the BJP, which has 156 legislators in the 182-member Gujarat assembly.

From Rajasthan, Sonia Gandhi was elected unopposed so were BJP's Chunnilal Garasiya and Madan Rathore.

All the six candidates from Maharashtra -- BJP's Chavan, who joined the party only last Tuesday after quitting the Congress, Medha Kulkarni and Ajit Gopchhade; Shiv Sena's Milind Deora, who also resigned from the Congress last month, Praful Patel (NCP) and Chandrakant Handore (Cong) were elected unopposed.

In Bihar, JD(U)'s Sanjay Kumar Jha, BJP's Dharmshila Gupta and Bhim Singh, Manoj Kumar Jha and Sanjay Yadav (both RJD) and Akhilesh Prasad Singh (Congress) were declared winners.

Uttar Pradesh will see 11 candidates vying for 10 seats. The BJP has fielded eight candidates - former Union minister R P N Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, state party general secretary Amarpal Maurya, former state minister Sangeeta Balwant, party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh, former Agra mayor Naveen Jain and local industrialist and former SP leader Sanjay Seth who joined the BJP in 2019.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) has renominated Jaya Bachchan and also announced the candidature of former MP Ramjilal Suman and retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan.

In Karnataka, five candidates are contesting for the four seats. The Congress has fielded Ajay Maken, Syed Naseer Hussain and GC Chandrasekhar, while Narayansa Bandage is the BJP candidate. JD(S) leader and former Rajya Sabha member D Kupendra Reddy is also in the fray.

In Himachal Pradesh, the BJP has forced a contest by fielding Harsh Mahajan against Congress's Abhishek Manu Singhvi for the single seat despite not having enough MLAs to win.

In the evening, TMC's Sushmita Dev, Sagarika Ghose, Mamata Thakur and Md Nadimul Haque and Samik Bhattacharya (BJP) were declared winners from West Bengal.

Union minister Murugan, Valmiki Dham Ashram head Umesh Nath Maharaj, Kisan Morcha's national vice president Banshilal Gurjar, and Madhya Pradesh BJP's women wing president Maya Naroliya bagged four seats for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh while Ashok Singh of the Congress also got elected unopposed.

From Odisha, Union minister Vaishnaw (BJP) and BJD's Debashish Samantray and Subhashish Khuntia were declared winners.

The YSR Congress won all the three seats in Andhra Pradesh - G Babu Rao, Y V Subba Reddy and M Raghunath Reddy while in neighbouring Telangana, the ruling Congress bagged two seats - Renuka Chowdhury and Anil Kumar Yadav - and BRS one seat - V Ravichandra.

BJP nominees in Uttarakhand (Mahendra Bhatt), Subhash Barala (Haryana), Devendra Pratap Singh (Chhattisgarh) were elected unopposed.

Prior to Tuesday's results, the BJP's strength in the Upper House of Parliament stood at 93 while the Congress had 30 seats, the second highest.

Among the members whose tenure is ending include former prime minister Manmohan Singh, Union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupendra Yadav, Mansukh Mandaviya and V Muraleedharan, and BJP's Anil Baluni and Sushil Kumar Modi.

Many senior BJP leaders and outgoing Rajya Sabha MPs, including seven Union ministers such as Dharmendra Pradhan and Bhupender Yadav, were renominated by the party for the biennial polls amid strong indications that several of them may contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. PTI