New Delhi: In a setback to the Congress, the BJP and an Independent candidate backed by the saffron party won the two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana.
The results for the RS polls were declared around 2.30 a.m on Saturday after high drama that put the counting on hold for almost eight hours.
BJP candidate Krishan Lal Panwar and JJP-backed BJP-supported Independent candidate, Kartikeya Shama respectively were declared elected.
While the value of votes polled by BJP was 3600 and Panwar won one seat, Sharma won the second seat with 2960 vote value. The Congress value of votes was pegged at 2900.
One Congress vote was declared invalid while Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi had cross-voted for Sharma, The Tribune reported.
Congress Chief Whip, BB Batra, said that one Congress vote had a tick in place of ‘I’, making it invalid.
High drama was witnessed as polling began for two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana in the morning though counting began only past midnight, 7.5 hours after the scheduled time.
Counting began after the ruling BJP-JJP’s petition to the Election Commission of India seeking cancellation of two Congress votes was rejected.
The CEO, Haryana, Anurag Aggarwal, said that the ECI had conveyed to them to “count all the votes”. It meant that the ECI rejected the petitions of the JJP, BJP and the Independent candidate.
In the 90-member Haryana Vidhan Sabha, 89 MLAs had cast their vote.
With three candidates in the fray, tension was palpable in the high-stakes election as soon as the first vote was cast.
The Congress had been fearing cross-voting and horse-trading since the beginning. That was the reason it had asked all its MLAs to be together and took them to a private resort in Raipur, Chhattisgarh. Kuldeep Bishnoi, however, did not go.
Ever since the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee was revamped and Kuldeep Bishnoi was not considered for the post of president, he has been sulking. He also sought time to meet Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, but was denied.