RS polls see unlikely winners

But in neighbouring Jharkhand, Shibu Soren (JMM) emerged victorious defeating Congress-RJD joint candidate Sarfaraz Ahmed by a huge margin. Ajay Maroo (BJP), a local journalist and a confidant of Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, made it to the Rajya Sabha for the second seat. Soren got 36 votes, while Maroo managed 26. Safraz won himself only 22 votes.

In other places, the results were as expected. In Rajasthan, Congress secured all three seats with Sonia Gandhi’s trusted lieutenant K. Natwar Singh polling the highest number of votes followed by Prabha Thakur and Abrar Ahmad. The BJP candidate announced his withdrawal from the race.

The same happened in Karnataka where the Congress not only got three seats for its candidates (B. Janardhan Poojary, Prema Cariappa and M.V. Rajashekharan) but also ensured Mallya’s victory by giving its fourth preference votes to him. This ensured BJP’s D.K. Tharadevi Siddhartha’s defeat by three votes.

Siddhartha Reddy, a member of BJP’s national executive, said, ‘‘We fought spiritedly against the spirit (liquor) politics.’’ The BJP can find solace in the fact that while it only has 41 votes in the Assembly, it managed 44 votes — three more than its strength.

But the Congress suffered a serious set-back in Orissa where its candidate Maurice Kujur lost to Dilip Ray. Though Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made every possible effort to ensure Ray’s defeat, the latter broke into the Biju Janata Dal and BJP votes and won on the basis of their second preference votes. Even Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi’s camping in Bhubaneshwar did not help Kujur.

The ruling Left Front won four RS seats in West Bengal while the Trinamool Congress bagged the fifth seat ending speculation of possible cross-voting by legislators in favour of the Congress’ Arjun Sen Gupta.

Dinesh Trivedi of the Trinamool Congress won by getting 56 votes out of the party’s total strength of 60 in the 294-member house.

Former city mayor Prasanta Chatterjee, Tarini Kanta Ray and Sheikh Khabiruddin Ahmed (CPI-M) were elected to the Upper House. The fourth seat went to Debabrata Biswas (FB) who was re-elected.

Suresh Bharadwaj (BJP) was elected to the RS from Himachal Pradesh defeating his rival Natha Singh (Congress) by eight votes. The seat was vacated following Chandresh Kumari’s (Congress) retirement.

The election for the lone RS seat from Manipur will be held on April 8.