The Bharatiya Janta Party(BJP) on Monday won both Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat unopposed after the seats had fallen vacant following the demise of Congress MP Ahmed Patel and BJP MP Abhay Ganpatray Bhardwaj.
Gujarat: BJP wins unopposed both Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat, including the one held by Congress leader Ahmed Patel.
— ANI (@ANI) February 22, 2021
The Rajya Sabha seats were won by BJP candidates Dinesh Anavadiya and Ram Mokariya after bypolls were held on the two seats due to the demise of demise of Mr Patel and Mr Bhardwaj.
Anavadiya, the state’s BJP OBC Morcha president, is also a senior party leader from the Banaskantha district and has served as the director of the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation between 2014-17. Mokariya, on the other hand, is a founder-chairman of a courier company besides being a loyal partyman for over four decades.
The victory of the two BJP candidates was expected on Thursday last week, the last day of nominations, when none of the Congress candidates turned up to file their nominations for the Rajya Sabha seats.
One of the two Rajya Sabha seats was held on by Congress veteran Ahmed Patel until his demise in November 2020.
BJP wins the Rajya Sabha seat held by Congress veteran Ahmed Patel
Ahmed Patel had held on to his Rajya Sabha seat for years on end. He had been elected to the Upper House five times from Gujarat, his native state, and served Congress in various capacities including its treasurer.
Most notably, Patel scraped through a nail-biting victory in the 2017 Rajya Sabha elections when the Congress loyalist returned to the upper house for the fifth time in a hard-fought contest.
BJP had never been able to secure a victory over the Rajya Sabha seat until Ahmed Patel was alive. Patel breathed his last on 25 November 2020 after he had suffered complications due to COVID-19 in a Gurgaon hospital.