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PM Modi congratulates newly elected Rajya Sabha members

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated everyone who was elected to the Rajya Sabha on Friday and expressed hope that they…

PM Modi congratulates newly elected Rajya Sabha members

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (Photo: AFP)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated everyone who was elected to the Rajya Sabha on Friday and expressed hope that they will be able to raise concerns of the states they represent.

“Congratulations to all those elected to the Rajya Sabha from various states and best wishes for their Parliamentary career. I hope they effectively voice the aspirations of the states they will represent,” the PM wrote on Twitter.

The BJP secured nine of the 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh and a seat each in Karnataka, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. In all, the party won 28 of the 58 Rajya Sabha seats in 16 states that will fall vacant in April.

On Friday, biennial elections were held in 25 of the seats in six states. The BJP won 12, the Congress took five, Trinamool Congress (TMC) clinched four, Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) secured three and the Samajwadi Party (SP) got one.

On March 15, 33 candidates were elected unopposed in the remaining 10 states. Of them, the BJP won 17, including union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar. The Congress won four, the Biju Janata Dal three, the RJD, JD-U and TDP two each and the Shiv Sena, the NCP and the YSR Congress one each.

Friday’s election was highly significant in Uttar Pradesh given that the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) – traditional rivals – had recently formed an alliance of sorts to take on the BJP in 2019. The two parties had recently defeated BJP in bypolls in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats, sending out a positive sign to anti-BJP forces in the country.

Yet the BJP candidate for the ninth seat, Anil Agarwal, defeated the lone BSP candidate Bhim Rao Ambedkar.

Things had become tough for the BSP, which needed 19 additional votes to  send its candidate to RS, after Independent MLA from Kunda, Raja Bhaiya, said that he will support the SP but not the BSP.

Read More: Rajya Sabha polls: Akhilesh Yadav thanks Raja Bhaiya for saying he is with SP

“The opportunistic face of SP has been once again exposed. It can take from others but can’t give,” Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath told media persons after BJP’s victory in a reference that Akhilesh Yadav’s party failed to transfer its own vote to Mayawati’s.

Read More: RS polls: Yogi calls SP ‘opportunistic’, cautions BSP

Without taking name of Mayawati, he said the election results are a “signal for some” and “they should be cautious”. “Signals are enough for an intelligent person,” he said.

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