New Delhi, Mar 23 (UNI) The much-awaited polling for the Rajya Sabha across six states went on expected lines on Friday in West Bengal and Telangana, but there was much excitement about the same in Uttar Pradesh,
wherein right from the morning hours, there was lot of excitement after talks about cross voting.
BJP, which is already the single largest party in Upper House of Parliament, was expected to gain about a dozen seats, but will be still far from attaining numerical conform in the 245-member House.
From Uttar Pradesh out of 10 seats, BJP's Arun Jaitley, Anil Jain, GVL Narasimha Rao, Vijay Pal Tomar, Kanta
Kardam, Ashok Bajpai, Harnath Yadav, Sakaldeep Rajbhar and Samajwadi Party's Jaya Bachchan seem to
be comfortable, while vote count was still on for the ninth seat.
For 58 Rajya Sabha seats to be filled in the biennial polls to the House of Elders, 33 candidates from 10 states have been already elected unopposed.
Voting exercise by the Legislators for the remaining 25 seats were held in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.
In UP, the excitement about the polls started after BSP MLA Anil Singh bluntly told the media that he had cross-voted in favour of BJP.
Independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya also gave mixed signals throughout the day.
There were some row over elections and counting process in Jharkhand. Three candidates - BJP's Sameer Uranv
and Pradeep Kumar Sonthalia and Congress' Dheeraj Sahu are in the fray for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Jharkhand.
The counting of votes in the election was delayed following Congress complaint that a JVM MLA did not
his ballot to the party's polling agent, The Election Commission rejected the complaint. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress bagged four seats and the Congress one.
All four Trinamool candidates - sitting Rajya Sabha member Nadimul Haque and candidates Subhasish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santanu Sen won, while Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, backed
Trinamool, also emerged victorious.
The CPI-M candidate Rabin Deb lost.
In Telangana, the ruling TRS retained its hold as three of its candidates B Prakash, B Lingaiah Yadav and
J Santosh Kumar were declared elected.
In Congress-ruled Karnataka, three seats went to it, as party nominees L Hanumanthaiah, Syed Naseer Hussain
and GC Chandrasekhar won. BJP nominee Rajeev Chandrashekhar was also declared elected.
BJP General Secretary Saroj Pandey won the lone Rajya Sabha seat, for which polling was held in Chhattisgarh on Friday, defeating Congress rival Lekhram Sahu.
Voting for polls to the Upper House of Parliament - Rajya Sabha - have been necessitated as 58 vacancies will be created next month.
For 58 seats, 33 candidates from 10 states were declared elected unopposed on March 15.
They include Union Ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar, among others.
UNI DEVN RJ 2316