New Delhi: Haryana Congress MLAs left Delhi for Chandigarh where voting will take place for the Rajya Sabha elections on Friday. They reached Delhi from Chhattisgarh's Raipur yesterday, where they were staying at a resort in a bid to avoid poaching. Congress MP Deepender Singh Hooda, who is also travelling along with the MLAs, said that party candidate Ajay Maken will win the Rajya Sabha elections.
"We are confident that our candidate Ajay Maken will win with more votes than our strength," Hooda said. Meanwhile, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) MLA Abhay Singh Chautala said he will vote for Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma. "My vote is not going to BJP or JJP but to (ex-Congress leader Venod Sharma's son) Kartikeya Sharma because of our family connections.
He is an independent candidate, I would not have supported him if he was a candidate of any party," he said. In Haryana, the need for polls arises as three candidates have filed nominations for two Rajya Sabha seats. The Congress party has nominated senior leader Ajay Maken while the BJP has fielded former minister Krishan Lal Panwar. Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma is also in the fray.
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Both the BJP-JJP alliance and Congress legislators were shifted to resorts to slash possibilities of poaching. While the BJP-JJP alliance has lodged their MLAs in a resort in Chandigarh, the Congress leaders were moved to a resort in Delhi. The polling to elect the members of the Upper House of the Parliament on 16 Rajya Sabha seats spread across four states will take place today amid speculations of horse-trading and fears of cross-voting.
Polling is set to begin at 9 am and will conclude at 4 pm. Notably, all 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
However, polling for the 16 seats spread across states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka will be held today due to the number of candidates exceeding the seats. Some prominent leaders, whose fates will be decided at 5 pm when the counting of the votes will take place, include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik. (ANI)
