Gandhinagar: Minister of External Affairs S Jaishankar and Gujarat BJP OBC front leader Jugalji Thakor have emerge victorious in the the bye-polls for two Rajya Sabha seat in Gujarat which was held in the assembly premises here today.

Jaishankar received 104 votes while Thakor has got 105 votes each, much higher than the 88 first priority votes required to win. Their opponents from Congress Gaurav Pandya and former minister Chandrikaben Chudasama have got 70 each.

There were total 175 voters of which the vote of one MLA is rejected. BJP candidates have received five more votes each. Dissident of Congress Alpesh Thakor and his close aide Dhavalsinh Zala had cross voted for BJP candidates and later resigned from the assembly. Two MLAs of the Bharatiya Tribal Party and one of NCP had also voted in favour of Congress.

Congress candidates had apart from the 69 votes of the party apart from 2 rebel MLAs have also got the vote of party supported independent MLA Jignesh Mewani.

The election started at 9 am today and ended at 4 pm after which counting of votes started a little later than the scheduled time of 5 pm due to objection by Congress candidate Pandya on the two cross voting party MLAs.

Looking at the arithmetic of the state assembly ruling BJP candidates win was already certain. Both of them today offered puja in Jagannath temple of Ahmedabad before poll.

The seats fell vacant following resignations of union ministers Amit Shah and Smriti Irani. Both offered their resignations after their election to Lok Sabha in recently concluded general election.
Currently four seats in the 182 member assembly are vacant due to resignation of as many BJP MLAs who were elected for Loksabha. Three other MLAs Bhagwan Barad (Talala seat) of Congress, Pabubha Manek (Dwarka) and Independent Bhupendra Khant (Morwa Hadaf) have been disqualified. So there are in all 175 MLA ie voters. Of these 100 are from BJP, 71 from Congress including two of its rebel MLAs Alpesh Thakor and Dhawal Zala, 2 from Bhartiya Tribal Party (Congress ally) and 1 of NCP and 1 Congress supported independent Jignesh Mewani.

The candidate getting 88 first priority votes was bound to win and this way in the separate voting for the two seats BJP was certain to win. However, Congress had flocked and taken its 69 MLAs (apart from Thakor and Zala) to a resort in North Gujarat due to an apparent fear of horse-trading/cross-voting.

Earlier the Supreme Court had on June 25 refused to interfere in the election on the Congress plea objecting to holding the two election on the same date but separately. The bye-elections held separately (ie each MLA can cast separate votes) but simultaneously.

Notably, the commission had announced the poll on June 15 after which Congress opposed it for the bye-polls being held separately. It had approached the Supreme Court on June 17 demanding simultaneous bye-polls (ie one MLA can cast vote for either of the candidate rather than current provision of one can cast separate votes for the two seats).

The EC had clarified that as each vacancy is considered a separate one, hence the bye-polls were being held separately even though on the same date.

Notably, Shah and Irani had won in the last Rajyasabha polls held in August 2017 when elections were held simultaneously on the 3 seats of Gujarat quota. In a nail-biting finish Congress leader Ahmed Patel had won the third seat with a close margin.

State Congress president Chavda today said that they would approach the apex court with an election petition to save the democracy and the constitution. It will also approach court for disqualification of the two cross-voter MLAs to prevent them from contesting any election for six years for defying the party whip.

Congress as well as BJP had issued whip to all its MLAs to cast votes in favour of the party candidates.