Nitish among five NDA candidates elected to Rajya Sabha from Bihar

Patna: All five NDA candidates — CM Nitish Kumar, BJP president Nitin Nabin, Union minister Ram Nath Thakur, RLM president Upendra Kushwaha and state BJP general secretary Shivesh Kumar — on Monday won the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha against the equal number of vacancies getting created in the Upper House from Bihar next month.

The assembly secretary-cum-returning officer, Khyati Singh, declared all the five NDA candidates victorious after the counting of votes late on Monday evening.




The Grand Alliance’s lone candidate, Amarendra Dhari Singh of RJD, lost the election, as four legislators of the opposition camp did not turn up to cast their votes, leading to his unexpected defeat. The legislators who remained absent during the voting included three from Congress and one from RJD.

“Among the NDA candidates, Nitish and Nitin each got 44 votes, Ram Nath and Upendra each got 42 votes, while Shivesh got 30 first preferential votes. Shivesh registered victory after he got more than 40 votes during the counting of the second preferential votes,” an assembly official told TOI.

According to the formula for the current Rajya Sabha polls in Bihar, a candidate required the votes of at least 41 MLAs to get through. Since four MLAs remained absent from the voting process on Monday, the required number of votes was reduced to 40.

Had the four opposition MLAs not remained absent and voted in favour of the RJD candidate, Amarendra Dhari Singh, he would have secured 41 votes instead of 37 and won the election, an assembly official said.

All 202 MLAs of the NDA camp cast their votes, while only 37 MLAs from the Grand Alliance side turned up and cast their votes, the official said. “Except for four absentees, no case of cross-voting was reported in the election. All 202 NDA MLAs cast their votes in favour of their respective five candidates, while 37 MLAs of the opposition camp cast votes in favour of the RJD candidate,” the official told TOI.

Coincidentally, this election elected the national presidents of three political parties to the Rajya Sabha—Nitish Kumar (JD-U), Nitin Nabin (BJP) and Upendra Kushwaha (RLM).

Five vacancies from Bihar will be created in the Rajya Sabha on April 9 this year, following the scheduled retirement of Prem Chand Gupta (former Union minister) and Amarendra Dhari Singh (both from RJD), Ram Nath Thakur (Union minister) and Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson Harivansh Narayan Singh (both from JD-U), and Upendra Kushwaha, also a former Union minister (of the RLM).

It is after a decade-long gap that Bihar on Monday witnessed voting in the Rajya Sabha elections. The last time voting was required was in the 2014 Rajya Sabha byelections, when JD(U) candidates diplomat-turned-polit