Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Newly turned BJP member Balwant Singh Rajput had reached the court seeing justice on the decision taken by the election commission in the much heated Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls.

Usually, Rajya Sabha polls are conducted very peacefully but Gujarat saw a ruckus created over three seats of the upper house in the state. Four candidates had contested for three seats, BJP party President Amit Shah, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani also a BJP member, Balwant Singh Rajput who got the ticket to fight the election soon after he resigned from Congress and joined BJP and the fourth candidate was Congress candidate Ahmed Patel. The win of Amit Shah and Smriti Irani was known in advance, the drama was all about the third seat between Patel and Rajput.

After the tough battle fought and a lot of commotion created, Ahmed Patel was declared as the winner. But his victory came in with a lot of problems. During the counting Congress’ polling agent Shaktisinh Gohil had lodged a complaint before the counting began, saying the two MLAs showed their ballots to BJP representatives before putting them in the ballot box. The MLAs are not allowed to show their ballots to anybody other than the authorised polling agent of their party, Gohil said. Both these MLAs voted for Rajput instead of voting for Ahmed Patel. However, as the votes were held invalid, Patel was declared the winner, had Patel got less than 44 votes, Rajput could have won with second preference votes from the BJP.

Rajput contended that the votes of two other Congress MLAs should also be discounted as they too had shown their ballot papers to unauthorised persons, and he be declared the winner. Regarding the plea of Balwan Singh Rajput, the Gujarat High Court on Monday issued notices to the Election Commission and Congress leader Ahmed Patel. 21 Sept is fixed as the date for hearing on the case.