Lucknow, Oct 27 (UNI) Eight candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday filed their nominations for the elections to the 10 Rajya Sabha seats on November 9.
The BJP candidates filed their nominations in the Tilak Hall of the Vidhan Bhawan in the presence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dr Dinesh Sharma and party’s state president Swatantra Dev Singh.
Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, BJP General Secretary Arun Singh, former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar, former Director General of Police Brijlal, Chairman of Social Welfare Construction Corporation BL Verma, former Minister Haridwar Dubey, former MLA Seema Dwivedi and Geeta Shakya filed their nominations as BJP candidates.
Earlier, Prof Ram Gopal Yadav from the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Ramji Gautam from the Bahujan Samaj party had filed their nominations. After the SP and BSP fielded one candidate each, there will be a total of 10 candidates in the fray.
In such a scenario, if no Independent candidate enters the fray, the candidates will be elected unopposed. However, speculations are being made that former Union Minister Akhilesh Das’s wife Alka Das may enter as an Independent candidate for the Rajya Sabha. Ms Das has sought the nomination paper. Voting will take place if she files the nomination.
The tenure of 10 Rajya Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh is going to end on November 25. These leaders include BJP’s Arun Singh, Neeraj Shekhar, Hardeep Singh Puri, Samajwadi Party’s Javed Ali Khan, Ram Gopal Yadav, Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, Ravi Prakash Verma, BSP’s Rajaram, Veer Singh and Congress’s PL Punia.
The Election Commission had announced the election for 10 seats of Rajya Sabha on Oct 13, the notification for which was issued on Oct 23.
Oct 27 was the last day of nomination, after which the nomination papers will be examined on Wednesday. Names can be withdrawn by November 2. Voting will be held on Nov 9 from 0900 hrs to 1600 hrs. The counting of votes will take place on the same day from 1700 hrs and the results will be declared.
