External Affairs Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and two other party candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat on Monday. Kesridevsinh Jhala and Babubhai Desai are the two other BJP candidates, who along with Jaishankar, were elected to the Upper House of Parliament for a term of six years. For Jaishankar, the diplomat-turned-politician, this will be the second term in Rajya Sabha from the BJP-ruled state after he was inducted into the Union Cabinet in 2019.
Returning Officer Reeta Mehta said the three candidates have been declared as being elected "uncontested", as per a PTI report.
Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala, Desai Babubhai Jesangbhai, and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Krishnaswami "have been declared elected uncontested on July 17," the RO said in a declaration on the National eVidhan Application website.
Monday was the last day for filing nominations, and if need be, polling was to take place on July 24.
The Opposition Congress had announced that it would not field candidates for polls to the three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat as it did not have enough MLAs in the 182-member Assembly.
Jaishankar filed his nomination on July 10 while Jhala and Desai submitted their papers on July 12.
Jhala and Desai were fielded after the BJP decided not to renominate the two sitting Rajya Sabha MPs from Gujarat, Jugalji Thakor and Dinesh Anavadiya whose terms were scheduled to end soon, as per the report.
The saffron party had won a record 156 seats in the Assembly polls held late last year, while the Congress saw its worst performance since the state was formed by managing to get just 17 seats.
Like the three seats in Gujarat, polling did not take place for six seats in West Bengal and one seat in Goa because of no opposing candidates in these seats.
BJP candidates Anant Maharaj from West Bengal, and Sadanand Shet Tanavade from Goa were also elected uncontested.
Besides Derek O'Brien, the other Trinamool Congress leaders elected unopposed are Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Dola Sen, Saket Gokhale, Samirul Islam, and Prakash Barik.