Voting for election to four Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat began amid a tight race as five candidates are in the fray for four seats. The ruling BJP, which has 103 legislators in the House, has fielded three candidates, while the Opposition Congress, with 65 legislators, has fielded two.
Both the BJP and the Congress have the support of one extra MLA as lone NCP MLA Kandhal Jadeja has announced that he would vote for the BJP despite a whip issued to him to vote for the Congress, while Independent MLA Jignesh Mevani will support the Congress since he had won the Assembly polls with backing from the party.
There is no clarity yet on two other MLAs of the Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP), the father-son duo Chhotubhai Vasava and Mahesh Vasava, as to which side they will go as both the BJP and the Congress have been making all-out efforts to get their votes.
The BJP has fielded Abhay Bharadwaj, Ramila Bara and former Congress leader Narhari Amin, while the Congress has given ticket to Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki.
The Opposition suffered a major setback as eight of its legislators resigned from the House ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls, bringing down its tally from 73 to 65.
Before the voting, both the BJP and the Congress had a series of meetings with legislators, including training on how to cast the ballot in the polls.
The BJP has two observers, Bhupendra Yadav and Ashish Shellar, while the Congress has one, Rajeev Satav.
Meanwhile, election authorities have made electorate arrangements to ensure that all health precautions like social distancing are followed at the voting centre.
Every voter (MLA) will be screened for body temperature and will have to use mask and adhere to social distancing norms. Legislators with fever or showing other symptoms will be kept in a separate waiting room.
The Chief Electoral Officer of Gujarat has appointed Dinkar Rawal as nodal officer (health) for the elections.
Earlier, three MLAs from the BJP and one from the Congress had tested positive for coronavirus but all of them have recovered now.
Now that the 182-member Gujarat Assembly’s strength has reduced to 172, a candidate will require the support of a minimum 35 MLAs to win, as per the RS election standard formula.
Ten Assembly seats are currently vacant — eight due to the resignations of Congress MLAs and two due to court cases.
This number (35) has been arrived at using a formula, [(Number of MLAs x 100)/(Vacancies+1)] + 1, with the value of each MLA’s vote being 100.
With 65 MLAs and one Independent (Jignesh Mewani) supporting its candidates, the Congress will still need the backing of four more MLAs to win both the seats.
While the BJPs House strength is 103, it will require the support of 105 MLAs to win the three seats.
The fate of the fourth seat will be decided by the two BTP MLAs and cross voting. If candidates fighting for the fourth seat do not get a clear majority, then second preferential votes will be counted.