Polls were held today for two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam. (Representational)
The Congress could be on the verge of losing a Rajya Sabha seat to the BJP in Assam, where elections to two seats in the upper house of parliament took place today.
The vote count for the Congress-led opposition's candidate has gone down with the Congress suspending an MLA for allegedly wasting his vote by writing "One" instead of "1" on the ballot paper.
Congress MLA and former minister Siddique Ahmed's suspension hits the prospects of his party's Ripun Bora.
Siddique Ahmed has "deliberately disobeyed the three-line whip", the Congress said in a statement.
Polls were held today for two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam. In the first seat, the BJP's candidate Pabitra Margherita is set to win unopposed.
There was a contest for the second seat. Ripun Bora was the opposition candidate while the BJP was supporting ally UPPL's candidate Rwngwra Narzary.
The All India United Democratic Front was supporting Mr Bora.
To win this seat, any candidate needs 43 votes.
The BJP and its allies have 83 votes of the total 126 in the state assembly. The numbers are enough for Pabitra Margherita to get elected from one seat, but falls short of three votes for Rwngwra Narzary.
The opposition had 44 votes but the count is down by one with a Congress MLA allegedly "wasting" his vote. It all comes down to the wire, even though opposition parties claim their votes are intact.
Reports suggested that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congress leader who joined the BJP in 2015, had "persuaded" some Congress MLAs to cross vote.
The BJP claimed that at least seven Congress MLAs helped the ruling party's candidate.
The votes are being counted.
