The Congress has lost a Rajya Sabha seat to the BJP in Assam, where elections to two seats in the upper house of parliament took place today. The BJP won the other seat unopposed.
The vote count for the Congress-led opposition’s candidate went down with the Congress suspending an MLA for allegedly wasting his vote by writing “One” instead of “1” on the ballot paper.
Congress MLA and former minister Siddique Ahmed’s suspension hit the prospects of his party’s Ripun Bora.
Siddique Ahmed has “deliberately disobeyed the three-line whip”, the Congress said in a statement.
Polls were held today for two Rajya Sabha seats in Assam. In the first seat, the BJP’s candidate Pabitra Margherita won unopposed.
There was a contest for the second seat. Ripun Bora was the opposition candidate while the BJP was supporting ally UPPL’s candidate Rwngwra Narzary.
The All India United Democratic Front was supporting Mr Bora.
To win this seat, any candidate needs 43 votes.
The BJP and its allies have 83 votes of the total 126 in the state assembly. The numbers were enough for Pabitra Margherita to get elected from one seat, but fell short of three votes for Rwngwra Narzary.
The opposition had 44 votes but the count was down by one with a Congress MLA allegedly “wasting” his vote. It all came down to the wire, even though opposition parties claimed their votes are intact.
Reports suggested that Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, a former Congress leader who joined the BJP in 2015, had “persuaded” some Congress MLAs to cross vote.
Seven Congress MLAs cross-voted and helped the ruling party’s candidate.
With inputs from NDTV
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