Bhubaneswar: BJP nominee and Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw along with two BJD leaders Debashish Samantaray and Subhasish Khuntia have been elected to Rajya Sabha unopposed.
Returning Officer Abanikanta Pattnaik has made this announcement after completion of the deadline for withdrawal of nomination papers for the polls.
As three valid nominees were there for the election to three RS seats, the election was not conducted and all the three candidates declared elected unopposed to the Upper House of the Parliament.
While BJD has nominated two candidates, the BJP has nominated Union Railway and Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Though the Governing BJD has a clear majority to win all three RS seats, it has nominated two candidates Shri Samantaray and Shri Khuntia.
Shri Vaishnaw was reelected to the Upper House of the Parliament from Odisha again. He was earlier elected to RS in 2019 from BJP with the support of ruling BJD.
The same equation was followed by the BJD and BJP this time too because the BJD has nominated only two candidates even though it has the majority to win all three seats in the ensuing poll for three RS seats.
Three Rajya Sabha seats from Odisha will fall vacant as Ashwini Vaishnaw, Amar Patnaik and Prashanta Nanda are due to retire from the Upper House in April this year.
The Union Railway Minister, who hails from Rajasthan, was an IAS officer serving as Collector of Cuttack and Balasore districts in Odisha.
The 1994-batch IAS officer had worked till 2003. He quit the IAS job in 2010. He joined the BJP in 2019 and then directly elected to RS and then became Cabinet Minister with two powerful portfolios.
Perhaps for the first time in Indian history, a bureaucrat turned politician has been given such due importance at both State and Central Levels.
