Gandhinagar: Shaktisinh Gohil, Rajya Sabha candidate of Congress party today after completion of polling told media persons that Congress party’s 65 MLAs stayed intact and voted in favor of Congress candidates. He said independent MLA Jignesh Mevani also voted for Congress candidates. Thus the party candidates received 66 votes, four short of number required for win of both Congress candidates. Shaktisinh said, when Rajya Sabha election was declared, Congress had enough MLAs to ensure victory of two candidates, however unfortunately, defection of number of Congress MLAs took place later.

Party MLA Ashwin Kotwal said, Congress candidates have received 66 votes. Congress was expecting remaining votes from 2 BTP MLAs, 1 NCP MLA and 2 BJP MLAs. However BTP MLAs didn’t turn up, NCP MLA voted for BJP and votes of 2 BJP MLAs couldn’t be brought in favor.

State Congress spokesperson Jayrajsinh Parmar said that polling today has completed without any issue or objection from polling agent on either side. He said, party might win only one seat at the end of counting.

Worth noting here that each Congress candidate was needing at least 35 first preference votes to get elected to Rajya Sabha. As per the order of the High Command, Shaktisinh Gohil was the first preference candidate and therefore a set of 35 Congress MLAs voted in his favor. Party’s other candidate Bharatsinh Solanki was also requiring 35 votes to get elected, however party could manage only 31 votes for him, as 2 BTP MLAs abstained, 1 NCP MLA voted for BJP and defection of 2 BJP MLAs couldn’t be managed.

It is believed that one of two MLAs, Congress was eyeing for cross voting was Kesrisinh, an MLA from Matar. Kesrsinh’s vote however was cast by BJP leader Shankar Chaudhary as proxy vote.

When four seats Rajya Sabha election was declared, Congress had comfortable numbers to elect two candidates. However, later one-by-one, eight Congress MLAs resigned from the membership of State assembly, paving a way for one extra seat victory for BJP. With this, BJP – 3 and Congress – 1 is going to be a conclusion of 4-seat, 5-candidate Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls 2020.

DeshGujarat