Gandhinagar: Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi has demanded that elections to the two Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat be held simultaneously and not separately. Two seats of Rajya Sabha recently went vacant in Gujarat following the resignations of Amit Shah and Smriti Irani. Both of them vacated their Rajya Sabha seat after their election to Lok Sabha. They resigned on separate dates. While Shah’s seat was declared vacant on May 28, Smriti’s seat was declared vacant a day later. It’s worth noting that Amit Shah was declared winner on May 23, the day of the national election results while Smriti Irani’s result was announced only the next day.

“If you have one election today and one after two weeks, four weeks, six weeks then you will enable the ruling party MLAs (lawmakers) to simply cross 51 per cent in the assembly of Gujarat and elect him in the first round and him in the second round which is held after weeks,” said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi to NDTV. Singhvi expressed the worry that the Election Commission, which has faced questions about fairness and objectivity after some of its controversial decisions during the national election, would declare polls on different days.

In figures:

The BJP has 99 legislators in the Gujarat assembly and the Congress has 77.

If the election to each seat is held on different days, the BJP will win both in the “first-past-the-post” system since it has 20 more lawmakers.

If the voting is held on the same day, the Congress can win one of the seats.

PTI reports:

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, at a press conference, said they came to know that there could be a bid to hold the elections for the two seats separately.

“This would be a mockery of our constitutional ethos. It would be completely contrary to conventions. Whenever there are two seats of a state going vacant, you have elections together. It is obvious to everybody that the purpose of that is to ensure there is a fair exercise of franchise of each MLA,” Singhvi said.

“If you have one election today and one after two weeks, four weeks, six weeks then you will enable the ruling party MLAs (lawmakers) to simply cross 51 per cent in the assembly of Gujarat and elect him in the first round and him in the second round which is held after weeks,” he said.

Any such “games” should be throttled at the inception because they are “unconstitutional games”, the Congress spokesperson said.

“We will demand from the Election Commission complete vigilance to ensure that whenever you want to have elections…they have to be held together. You cannot use a technicality to hold them separately,” Singhvi said.

He said the party will approach the Election Commission with its demand of holding of the elections of the two Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat together.

The BJP has 99 legislators in the Gujarat assembly and the Congress 77.

If the election to each seat is held on different days, the BJP was expected to win both, while if the voting is held on the same day, the Congress could win one of the seats.