BJP's tally in RS increases after party wins four more seats from NE

Guwahati/Agartala, April 1, 2022

Winning four Rajya Sabha seats from three northeastern states -- Assam, Tripura and Nagaland -- in the recent elections, the BJP has increased its tally in the Upper House of the Parliament.

The elections for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Assam and one from Tripura were held on Thursday.

BJP nominee S. Phangnon Konyak was elected unopposed to the lone Rajya Sabha seat from Nagaland last Friday.

The Rajya Sabha term of Ripun Bora and Ranee Narah of the Congress in Assam will be expiring on April 2.

The term of Rajya Sabha member from Tripura, Jharna Das (Baidya) of CPI-M, and K.G. Kenye of Naga People's Front (NPF) in Nagaland will also expire on the same date.

In Assam, the BJP nominee Pabitra Margherita and the party's ally United People's Party Liberal (UPPL) candidate Rwngwra Narzary wrested the two Rajya Sabha seats from the Congress.

BJP's Assam unit spokesperson Margherita secured 46 votes while Narzary, who is the president of UPPL, bagged 44 votes. The Opposition-backed candidate and sitting Rajya Sabha member Ripun Bora of the Congress got 35 votes as the election witnessed cross voting by Congress MLAs.

Votes of two Congress MLAs were rejected due to procedural reasons.

In Tripura, state BJP president Manik Saha on Thursday was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state's lone seat defeating his rival and CPI-M candidate Bhanulal Saha. The BJP candidate secured 40 votes while the CPI-M nominee bagged 15.

The BJP for the first time in the electoral history of Tripura won the Rajya Sabha seat even as the party succeeded in the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 by winning both the two seats from the state in the lower house of Parliament.

Four seats were lying vacant in the 60-member Tripura Assembly.

BJP's ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) MLA Brishaketu Debbarma did not cast his vote on Thursday as he resigned from the Assembly in June 2021, and joined the TIPRA (Tipraha Indigenous Progressive Regional Alliance) headed by Tripura's royal scion, Pradyot Bikram Manikya Deb Barman.

Debbarma's resignation was, however, not yet accepted by the Assembly speaker Ratan Chakraborty due to some procedural reasons.

In Nagaland, the BJP's state Mahila Morcha president S. Phangnon Konyak was on Friday elected unopposed as the Rajya Sabha member from the state, making her the first woman from the state to get a berth in Parliament's Upper House.

The BJP with 12 MLAs is an ally of Nagaland's United Democratic Alliance (UDA) government in which NPF with 25 MLAs is a major ally and the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP), with 21 members, is the dominant party of the UDA, which is an all-party alliance governing India's first Opposition-less state.

The NPF and the NDPP had supported Konyak.

Since Nagaland got statehood in 1963, the northeastern state had got only one woman Parliamentarian, Rano M. Shaiza, who was elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977 as an independent candidate. The state Assembly has never had a woman MLA.

IANS