BJP candidate and External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar won the one of the two vacant seats from Gujarat for Rajya Sabha, on Friday. Jaishankar got 104 votes in his favour as against his Congress rival Gaurav Pandya who got 70 votes.
While the ruling BJP had fielded Jaishankar and party's OBC leader Jugal Ji Thakur, Congress had nominated Chandrika Chudasama and Gaurav Pandya for the Rajya Sabha bypoll from Gujarat.
Polling for the two Rajya Sabha seats vacated by Union Ministers Amit Shah and Smriti Irani, after they were elected to the Lok Sabha in the April-May 2019 election, ended at 4 PM.
Voting took place at a single polling booth at the state assembly complex with separate divisions for the two seats, since elections were held separately for the seats as decided by the Election Commission.
Since these were by elections and Shah and Irani had resigned on different dates, the elections to both the seats were conducted separately.
The state MLAs cast their votes at the Vidhan Sabha for the two seats of the Upper House of Parliament. The by-polls were held on the fourth floor of Gujarat Vidhan Sabha in Gandhinagar.
To avoid horse trading, Congress had on Thursday shifted 69 party legislators to Balaram resort in Palanpur area of Gujarat's Banaskatha district, nearly 150 kilometres away from Ahmedabad.
Congress MLAs Alpesh Thakor and Dhavalsinh Zala resigned from the Gujarat Assembly Friday apparently after voting against the party candidates in the Rajya Sabha bypolls.
Both the disgruntled MLAs indulged in "cross-voting" as they gave their votes to BJP candidates instead of Congress nominees, said a senior Congress leader.
Thakor, who launched a vitriolic attack on the Congress after resigning from the Assembly membership, said he voted for "honest national leadership".