GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday announced that the BJP and its ally United People’s Party Liberal won one seat each, thus bagging both the seats from the state in the ongoing Rajya Sabha elections.
BJP candidate Pabitra Margherita secured 46 votes while its ally party UPPL’s candidate Rwngwra Narzary secured 44 votes. Congress candidate Ripun Bora secured 35 votes whereas 1 vote was cancelled. With this victory, the BJP’s number in the Upper House reached the 100 mark and it is the first party to do so since 1988.
Assam Chief Minister took to Twitter to announce the victory and said, “We won both the Rajya Sabha seats from Assam (one by the BJP and other by UPPL, our partner) by a huge margin of 11 and 9 votes respectively.”
The Chief Minister also extended greetings to the winners and said that the state has reposed faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi by electing two NDA candidates to the Rajya Sabha.
“Assam has reposed its faith in PM Sri @narendramodi ji by electing two NDA candidates to the Rajya Sabha by huge margins – BJP’s Sri Pabitra Margherita (won by 11 votes) & UPPL’s Sri Rwngwra Narzary (won by 9 votes). My compliments to winners,” Sarma tweeted.
For the first time, Congress will have no Rajya Sabha MP from Assam. The poor performance of the Congress in assembly polls across five states will impact its Rajya Sabha numbers and the party is now staring at the possibility of losing the Leader of Opposition status in the upper house of Parliament. After binneial polls to Upper House are held this year, Congress numbers will be at a historic low and likely to be close to the minimum strength required to maintain the Leader of Opposition status. If the party is unable to do well in Gujarat polls later this year and the Karnataka assembly polls next year, it could lose this status in the subsequent binneial elections to the upper House.
Earlier, the Congress party had filed a complaint before the Election Commission of India that some BJP MLAs had violated the rules of Rajya Sabha polls and the Congress party demanded that those MLAs votes should be cancelled.