By Our Staff Reporter
Bhopal, Mar 28:
The Bharatiya Janata Party won all the three Rajya Sabha seats from Madhya Pradesh in a biennial RS polls held here on Friday. All the three contestants of the BJP - vis-à-vis Raghunandan Sharma, Prabhat Jha and Maya Singh emerged victorious by securing 58 votes each. The defeated independent candidate Vivek Tankha, who enjoyed the support of the Congress and the Samajwadi Party could muster only 51 votes. Among various political parties, the Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs refrained themselves from the electoral exercise.
The victory of the BJP in the RS elections has come as a morale booster for the party, particularly after its ignominious defeats in the recent by-polls in the state. The results of the Rajya Sabha elections were declared here on Friday evening with the party nominees Raghunandan Sharma, Prabhat Jha and Maya Singh being declared as victorious. All the three contestants secured 58 votes each of first preferences.
Apart from its own MLAs, the BJP also secured the votes of two MLAs from Samanta Dal, three MLAs from Gondwana Gantantra Party and one MLA each from the Janata Dal (United) and an independent candidate. As against the BJP candidates, independent candidate Tankha secured 51 votes, of which 41 votes belonged to the Congress, seven to the Samajwadi Party, while one vote each cast in favour of Tankha by an MLA of the Nationalist Congress Party, the Communist Party of India and an independent. Barring Harsh Singh of the Rashtriya Samanta Dal, all the MLAs cast their votes through open ballot.
At 6.10 pm on Friday, as soon as Raghunandan Sharma and Prabhat Jha came out of the vote counting venue, they were garlanded by the party MLAs. Thereafter, Maya Singh also came out of the vote counting venue after meeting Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and she too was welcomed by the party leaders and MLAs.
All the three BJP candidates had been declared winner in the first round of vote counting itself on the basis of first preferences votes.
Premchand Guddu of the Congress was the last to cast his votes. The BSP MLAs who remained absent from voting included Dr I M P Verma and Lakhan Singh Baghel.
Earlier, of the three Rajya Sabha seats, Congress held two and BJP one seat.
Prabhat Jha described his win as the party's victory. We won because of people's popular support to the BJP, Jha said adding he will work for the development of the state. Jha also expressed his gratitude towards state Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the state BJP president, Narendra Singh Tomar for their support.
Reacting to her victory, Maya Singh said that MLAS had voted her, apparently on account of good works carried out by the BJP government in the state. Maya said "Since day one, party was confident that it will win all the three seats because the party do not believe in horse trading.
Raghunandan Sharma described his win as a victory of belief. We will raise problems of Madhya Pradesh with full force, he said.
On the other hand, reacting to his defeat, independent candidate, Vivek Tankha
Said that the allegation about bribery has hurt him deeply and it has affected his public life. I have come here to win but than I have taken defeat in my stride, he added
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