BJP-Led NDA Touches Majority Mark In Rajya Sabha. Check Opposition's Strength

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now has an edge in the Rajya Sabha after Union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurian were elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha 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 of BJP 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.

With the election of eight members from the BJP and two from alliance partners, the NDA strength in the upper house has increased to 112. However, the nominated members have also expressed support to NDA, which will take its number to 118. The majority mark in Rajya Sabha is 119. The Opposition's strength is 85.

The effective strength of the 245-member Rajya Sabha is currently 240 and even with the support of six nominated members, the ruling NDA will fall short of the majority mark.

Four seats are vacant in Jammu and Kashmir, which is yet to elect its assembly and the election to the Tripura seat will be held on September 3.

The BJP's allies in the Upper House include JD(U), NCP, JD(S), RPI(A), Shiv Sena, RLD, RLM, NPP, PMK, Taamil Manila Congress and UPPL.

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 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 Bharatiya Janata Party (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 for the saffron party.

However, the nomination papers of one of the two other nominees were rejected during scrutiny, while Singh withdrew his candidature on the last day for opting out of the race (August 27), leading to the unopposed election of Kurian as a Rajya Sabha member for the remaining term (lasting till 2026) of the seat vacated by Scindia, an official said.

The BJP's Kiran Choudhry, who switched over from the Congress, had filed her nomination for the bypolls from Haryana. And being the lone candidate in the contest in the state, she was declared elected unopposed.

The 69-year-old was given a certificate at 4.33 pm by Returning Officer Saket Kumar for the bypolls at the Haryana Vidhan Sabha secretariat here.

Kiran Choudhry, daughter-in-law of former chief minister Bansi Lal, represented the Tosham seat in the Haryana Assembly.

From Odisha, BJP candidate Mamata Mohanata returned to the Rajya Sabha after winning unopposed in the by-election, necessitated by her resignation as a BJD MP and switching sides.

Mohanta was declared elected unopposed as there was no candidate in the fray when the deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended, officials said.

The opposition BJD and Congress did not field any candidates. However, BJP fielded Jagannath Pradhan as a 'dummy candidate', but he withdrew his nomination papers before the end of the deadline, paving the way for Mohanta's re-election.

Dummy candidates are often fielded by political parties to have a cushion in case the nomination of the official candidate gets rejected.

Chief Minister Maohan Charan Majhi congratulated Mohanta in the assembly after the result was declared.

From Bihar, former Union Minister Upendra Kushwaha and Supreme Court lawyer Manan Kumar Mishra were elected unopposed. Kushwaha, who heads Rashtriya Lok Morcha, and BJP leader Mishra were candidates of the ruling NDA.

According to the Vidhan Sabha secretariat, they were declared elected unopposed after the deadline for the withdrawal of nomination papers ended as there were no other candidates for the two seats.

Both of them met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after the results were declared.

In a post on X, Kushwaha wrote, "After being elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha today, I have once again got the opportunity to enter the prestigious Upper House of Parliament. I have got this opportunity to ensure that me and my party work tirelessly to fulfil the dream of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi Ji and CM, Nitish Kumar Ji, to make the country a developed nation and Bihar a developed state." The Rajya Sabha seats, for which the by-elections were held, became vacant after Vivek Thakur of the BJP and Misa Bharti of the RJD were elected to the Lok Sabha. 

With inputs from PTI