As of Thursday, when the nomination withdrawal procedure was closed, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has all four of Gujarat’s Rajya Sabha seats in hand thanks to the uncontested election of its candidates.
Jitendra Kanzariya, Mansinh Parmar, Rajesh Shukla, and Mukesh Rathwa were officially proclaimed elected to the Upper House by Chetan Pandya, the Returning Officer and Secretary of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, once no other candidates remained in the race.
Four seats in Gujarat’s Rajya Sabha will be up for grabs in the upcoming biennial elections, according to the Election Commission of India. All four BJP candidates submitted legitimate nomination papers by the June 8 deadline.
The validity of all nominations was determined after review on June 9. According to the norms of the Rajya Sabha, the election was deemed uncontested since there were an equal number of candidates as there were vacancies and no one withdrew from the contest.
Term limits for the current members of the Rajya Sabha, Ram Mokariya, Narhari Amin, Ramilaben Bara, and Shaktisinh Gohil, expire on June 21, and will be succeeded by the newly elected members.
With Shaktisinh Gohil’s resignation, the Congress would no longer have a representative from Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha, which is a major political consequence of the election.
Because the BJP controls the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, everyone was expecting this outcome.
Due to the BJP’s overwhelming majority in the 182-member Assembly, opposition parties have an uphill battle to get representation in the Rajya Sabha without strong legislative backing.
Each of the four elected leaders comes from a unique social and organisational background within the Gujarati BJP.
Jitendra Kanzariya has been an integral part of the BJP’s grassroots network expansion and has been widely acknowledged for his lengthy history of organisational work inside the party.
The BJP’s outreach to rural groups has been aided by Mansinh Parmar, who has been intimately linked to BJP initiatives in tribal and rural regions.
While maintaining an active role in state politics, Rajesh Shukla has served in a number of organisational and political capacities within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mukesh Rathwa is expected to enhance the party’s representation of Scheduled Tribe communities at the national level. Rathwa is from the tribal heartland of eastern Gujarat.
Their election ensures that Gujarat will have a full delegation in the Rajya Sabha once again, following the retirement of the departing members later this month.
The results show that the BJP is still very much in control of Gujarati politics, and they also show how hard it is for the opposition to get MPs from the state to the Upper House of Parliament.
The fact that all four BJP candidates from Gujarat were elected to the Rajya Sabha without facing any opposition is a clear indication of the BJP’s dominance in the state’s politics. After Shaktisinh Gohil retired from the Congress party in Gujarat, the victory ensured that the BJP would maintain their parliamentary majority in the state. It also marked the end of Congress participation from Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha.
Image: The Wire
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