Voting to elect the members on 16 Rajya Sabha seats spread across four states begins. The polling of the Upper House of the Parliament comes amid speculations of horse-trading and fears of cross-voting.
The polling will conclude at 4 pm on Friday (10 June).
For the unversed, all 41 candidates in fray in today's poll from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
The voting for the 16 seats spread across Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka is being held today due to the number of candidates exceeding the seats.
Amid allegations of attempts at horse-trading in the Rajya Sabha polls, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar Thursday said special observers have been appointed to oversee the election process which will be videographed.
To prevent poaching of their leaders, major political parties had corralled their MLAs in hotels and resorts.
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The counting of the votes will be at 5 pm today and prominent leaders, whose fates will be decided include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik.
Meanwhile, discontent had cropped up in the Congress after the announcement of nominees for the Upper House.
Maharashtra
In Maharashtra, the party has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi for the polls while Praful Patel has been fielded from the NCP. Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar have been given a run in the polls.
BJP has fielded Dr Anil Bonde, Piyush Goyal and Dhananjay Mahadik from Maharashtra.
It is worth mentioning that there will be seven candidates in the fray for the six seats in the state.
Haryana
In Haryana, polling will take place for two seats. Both BJP alliance and Congress legislators were shifted to resorts to prevent any possibilities of poaching of their lawmakers.
While the BJP-JJP alliance has lodged their MLAs to a resort in Chandigarh, the Congress leaders were moved to a resort in the city.
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The Congress party has nominated senior leader Ajay Maken. From the BJP, former minister Krishan Lal Panwar will be contesting.
Karnataka
JD(S) has fielded entrepreneur and social worker Kupendra Reddy as its first candidate in the Rajya Sabha election .
The Congress had fielded Mansoor Ali Khan as its second candidate to corner the JD(S) and its bid to send Kupendra Reddy to the Rajya Sabha.
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Six candidates are in the fray for the Rajya Sabha poll to four seats from Karnataka.
In Rajasthan too, Congress shifted its MLAs to resorts in Udaipur and Jaipur. The lawmakers were lodged at the Leela Palace Hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur on the penultimate day of Rajya Sabha voting.
With inputs from PTI and ANI
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