“Satyamev Jayate,” tweeted Ahmed Patel after his win. Mr Patel is political secretary to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and his win today in a face-off with the BJP’s master strategist Amit Shah is a big shot in the arm of the opposition party ahead of assembly elections later this year in Gujarat, where it has steadily lost ground to the BJP.
He needed 44 votes to win and he got 44 in a win aided by the Election Commission holding the votes of two Congress rebels invalid for showing their ballot papers to the BJP’s election agent. BJP’s Amit Shah and Smriti Irani got 46 votes each.
Amit Shah and Smriti Irani were sure to win given the BJP’s big numbers in the Gujarat assembly, whose members vote for the Rajya Sabha election.
The party also fielded a third candidate to make challenge Ahmed Patel for the third seat. Mr Patel was counting on 44 of the Congress’ 51 MLAs to support him. One of the 44 voted against him, so he had 43 votes from his party.
Counting of votes was delayed by over six hours because the Congress petitioned the Election Commission to demand that the two rebel legislators be disqualified. Senior BJP leaders including several union ministers, too approached the Election Commission to counter the Congress’s objections, both sides sending multiple teams to the poll panel’s Delhi office on Tuesday evening.
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