HT Bureau
GUWAHATI, Aug 26: Two Rajya Sabha candidates of BJP in Assam were elected unopposed on Monday as the opposition refrained from fielding candidates against two vacant berths in the upper house of the parliament.
The ruling party fielded former Union minister Rameswar Teli and ex-MLA Mission Ranjan Das in the two vacant seats of Rajya Sabha last week. Since there were no candidates from the opposition camp, both Teli and Das were declared elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed by the election officials.
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The two BJP nominees collected their certificate of winning the election unopposed. The seats got vacant after Sarbananda Sonowal and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa fought the Lok Sabha elections and they became MPs in the lower house of the parliament.
Sonowal won from the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat and Tasa defeated the Congress candidate Roselina Tirkey in the newly formed Kaziranga parliamentary constituency. To recall, in the delimitation exercise, the Kaliabor constituency was scrapped by the Election Commission and a Kaziranga Lok Sabha seat was introduced. This had forced Congress leader Gaurav Gogoi to shift to Jorhat parliamentary constituency.
“Congratulations to @BJP4Assam candidates, Shri Mission Ranjan Das and Shri @Rameswar_Teli on being elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Assam. My gratitude to our legislators and valued NDA partners for their unequivocal support to their candidature,” Sarma wrote on micro-blogging site X.
“I am confident that both the veteran leaders will represent the aspirations of the tea tribes community and Barak Valley with renewed vigour in the Upper House,” he added.
Teli represented Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat twice in the parliament; however, he was dropped after Sonowal was projected as BJP candidate in Dibrugarh. It was common apprehension that Teli would be given Sonowal’s vacant seat in the Rajya Sabha.
On the other hand, Das is a Hindu Bengali leader and an old loyalist of the BJP. Das was elected to the state assembly four times and he was one of the few leaders who reaped the seeds of the BJP in Assam when the saffron fold was a weak force in the state.
Notably, Das earlier also sought a Rajya Sabha verth but he was denied.
