The Election Commission today stayed the declaration of results in the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh following a complaint from the Congress that the rejection of both its candidates two days ago by the returning officer was ‘‘undemocratic and unconstitutional.’’ The EC will examine the papers summoned from Lucknow and give its verdict on the validity of the RO’s decision tomorrow, deputy election commissioner A N Jha told reporters.If the EC upholds the RO’s decision, the 11 remaining candidates from Uttar Pradesh, including Anil Ambani, Jaya Bachchan, Lalit Suri, Arun Shourie and Murli Manohar Joshi, will be immediately declared elected unopposed.On the other hand, if the EC invalidates the RO’s decision, then one or both the Congress candidates will join the fray and there will be a poll for the 11 seats on June 28.Earlier in the day, a Congress delegation led by state unit president Jagadambika Pal met the three-member EC and alleged that the RO had rejected the nominations of its candidates ‘‘under pressure from the state government.’’ Pal said that the RO had no authority to reject the nominations on what he described as a ‘‘clerical mistake.’’The controversy in fact arose because the original Congress candidate could not make it to Lucknow on time (following a snag in the aircraft and bad weather) and its two cover candidates filed deficient papers in a last-minute scramble.Pramod Tiwari, the Congress legislative party leader in Lucknow, alleged that there was a conspiracy to avoid a contest as that would have exposed the BJP-SP link. ‘‘In a democracy, there should be election. We want elections. And for those who do not want elections, there might be some hidden reasons which they do not want to disclose and everyone knows the reasons,’’ he said.SP general secretary Amar Singh, who also visited the EC, denied the Congress charges but said: ‘‘I have not come here to speak against Congress because it is a supporting party of SP in UP and SP is extending support to it at the Centre.’’
