In a jolt to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress candidate Ahmed Patel on Wednesday scraped through to notch a victory in a bitterly-contested Rajya Sabha election against all out efforts of the BJP to check his attempt to seek a fifth term.
Patel, 68, the powerful political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is said to have secured 44 votes defeating Congress defector Balwantsinh Rajput.
The other two successful candidates in the election were BJP president Amit Shah and Union Minister Smriti Irani.
"Satyamev Jayate (Truth alone triumphs). This is not just my victory. It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power, muscle power and abuse of state machinery," Patel tweeted soon after he won.
सत्यमेव जयते
— Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) 8 August 2017
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was part of a Congress delegation that met the Election Commission on Tuesday seeking rejection of votes of two Congress rebels said: "Money, muscle and manipulation could not win in the Guarat Rajya Sabha elections."This is not just my victory. It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power,muscle power and abuse of state machinery
— Ahmed Patel (@ahmedpatel) 8 August 2017
"BJP can break a few weak Congress MLAs but BJP cannot break the Congress party," he said in his reaction.
Earlier, drama was enacted at the Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday night over the counting for the Gujarat Rajya Sabha elections, after the Congress approached the poll panel to demand cancellation of votes of its two MLAs for showing the ballots to BJP chief Amit Shah.
In a major reprieve to the Congress, the EC rejected the votes cast by its two MLAs for violating the "secrecy of ballots".
The Commission also asked the returning officer for the polls to segregate the two ballots cast by Bhola Bhai Gohil and Raghavji Bhai Patel and proceed with the counting.
The order said that while going through the video footage of the polling process, it found that the two had violated the secrecy of ballots.
Earlier, three delegations each of the Congress and BJP made a dash for Nirvachan Sadan within two hours, with the former demanding the votes of MLAs Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavjibhai Patel be declared invalid, and the latter insisting counting be taken up “immediately”.
The results were yet to be announced when this paper went to print.
Congress was the first to move the Election Commission demanding cancellation of votes of its two disgruntled MLAs for allegedly showing their votes to persons other than the authorised party representatives. Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala and RPN Singh also produced a video of the poll proceedings to the commission and demanded that votes of Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavjibhai Patel be cancelled as per law since they violated the “secrecy of ballot”.
According to the rules, voters for the Rajya Sabha elections have to show their ballots to authorised representative of their respective parties before casting them. Terming Congress’ objections as “baseless”, a delegation of BJP leaders, including Union ministers Arun Jaitley, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Piyush Goyal, approached the EC demanding immediate counting of votes, contending that validity of votes once put in ballot boxes could not be questioned.
Goyal told reporters after meeting EC officials that the decision of presiding officers is final. If neither they nor election observers objected to it when votes were cast, then their validity cannot be questioned now, he said, and demanded that “the counting of votes be done immediately and results declared”. Prasad said the Congress was acting out of fear of losing the poll, in which its senior leader Ahmed Patel is locked in a tight fight with a Congress rebel fielded by the BJP.