Photo: IANS
Guwahati/Agartala, April 1: Winning four Rajya Sabha seats from three northeastern states - Assam, Tripura and Nagaland, the BJP has increased its members' tally in the Upper House of the Parliament from the region.
The elections for the two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam and one in Tripura were held on Thursday. BJP nominee S. Phangnon Konyak was elected unopposed to the lone Rajya Sabha seat in Nagaland last Friday. The Rajya Sabha term of Ripun Bora and Ranee Narah of the Congress in Assam will be expiring on April 2.
The term of Rajya Sabha member from Tripura, Jharna Das (Baidya) of CPI-M, and K.G. Kenye of Naga People's Front (NPF) in Nagaland will expire on April 2. In Assam, the BJP nominee Pabitra Margherita and the party's ally United People's Party Liberal (UPPL) candidate Rwngwra Narzary wrested the two Rajya Sabha seats from the Congress.
BJP's Assam unit spokesperson Margherita secured 46 votes while Narzary, who is the president of UPPL, bagged 44 votes. While the Opposition-backed candidate and sitting Rajya Sabha member Ripun Bora of the Congress got 35 votes as the election witnessed cross voting by Congress MLAs.
Votes of the two Congress MLAs were rejected due to procedural reasons.
In Tripura, state BJP president Manik Saha on Thursday was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state's lone seat defeating his rival and CPI-M candidate Bhanulal Saha.
The BJP candidate secured 40 votes while the CPI-M nominee bagged 15 seats.
The BJP for the first time in the electoral history of Tripura won the Rajya Sabha seat even as the party succeeded in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 by winning all the two seats in the lower house of parliament.
Four seats were lying vacant in the 60-member Tripura Assembly. BJP's ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) MLA Brishaketu Debbarma did not cast his vote on Thursday as he resigned from the Assembly in June 2021, and joined the TIPRA (Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance) headed by Tripura's royal scion, Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman.
Debbarma's resignation was, however, not yet accepted by the Assembly speaker Ratan Chakraborty due to some procedural reasons.
In Nagaland, the BJP's state Mahila Morcha president S. Phangnon Konyak was on Friday elected unopposed as the Rajya Sabha member from the state, making her the first woman from the state to get a berth in the Parliament's Upper House.
The BJP with 12 MLAs is an ally of Nagaland's United Democratic Alliance (UDA) government in which NPF with 25 MLAs is a major ally and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), with 21 members, is the dominant party of the UDA, which is an all party alliance governing the India's first Opposition less state.
The NPF and the NDPP have supported Konyak, who is the first woman Rajya Sabha member from Nagaland.
Since Nagaland got statehood in 1963, the northeastern state had got only one woman Parliamentarian, Rano M. Shaiza, who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977 as an independent candidate. The state Assembly has never had a woman MLA.
