india

Updated: Jun 28, 2019 22:43 IST

Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan from Bihar and two BJD candidates and a BJP nominee from Odisha supported by the regional party were on Friday elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday.

The Lok Janshakti Party chief, Paswan, has been elected to the Upper House in a bypoll necessitated by the resignation of his cabinet colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad, who got elected to the Lok Sabha from the Patna Sahib seat in the general elections.

Paswan was declared elected and the certificate was handed over to him, Bateshwar Nath Pandey, the Returning Officer and secretary to Bihar Legislative Assembly told news agency PTI.

This is the second time that Paswan, who began his political career as a Sanyukt Socialist Party MLA in the 1960s, has been elected to the Rajya Sabha. His previous election to the Upper House was in 2010, when he entered the Parliament with support of his then ally the RJD a year after having lost his Hajipur Lok Sabha seat.

Meanwhile, Returning Officer to Odisha Assembly B P Mishra declared Biju Janata Dal’s Amar Patnaik and Sasmit Patra and Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Ashwini Vaishnav elected to the Rajya Sabha. The BJD had suppported Vaishnav. “The three candidates have been elected to the Rajya Sabha uncontested,” Mishra told reporters.

He handed over certificates of election to three candidates after their election.

The bypolls were conducted to the three vacant seats after BJD’s Achyuta Samanta, Pratap Keshari Deb and Soumya Ranjan Patnaik resigned from the Rajya Sabha following their election to the Lok Sabha and the state assembly.

Amar Patnaik is BJD’s IT cell chairman and spokesperson while Sasmit Patra too is a spokesperson of the regional party. Patra has been elected to the Rajya Sabha in place of P K Deb, who has been elected to the state assembly. His tenure as RS member will be for three years till 2022. Amar Patnaik and Vaishnav have been elected in place of Samanta and S R Patnaik respectively. Both of them will be RS members for five years till 2024.