S Jaishankar, 2 other BJP candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat

Three candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, were on Monday declared elected “uncontested” to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, officials said.

Apart from Jaishankar, the other two BJP candidates elected to the Upper House of Parliament for a 6-year term are Kesridevsinh Jhala and Babubhai Desai.

For the career diplomat-turned-politician, who was inducted into the Union Cabinet in 2019, this will be the second term in the Rajya Sabha from the BJP-ruled state. Returning Officer Reeta Mehta said the three candidates have been declared as being elected “uncontested”.

Kesridevsinh Digvijaysinh Jhala, Desai Babubhai Jesangbhai, and Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Krishnaswami “have been declared elected uncontested on July 17,” the RO said in a declaration on the National eVidhan Application website.

Monday (July 17) was the last date to withdraw nomination forms, and if required, polling was to take place on July 24.

The Opposition Congress had announced it would not field candidates for polls to the three Rajya Sabha seats from Gujarat as it did not have enough MLAs in the 182-member Assembly. Jaishankar had filed his nomination form on July 10, while Jhala and Desai submitted their papers on July 12.

Two sitting Raya Sabha MPs from Gujarat, Jugalji Thakor and Dinesh Anavadiya — whose term was to end soon — were not renominated by the BJP which instead fielded Jhala and Desai this time.

The saffron party had won a record 156 seats in the Assembly polls held late last year, while the Congress saw its worst performance since the state was formed by managing to get just 17 seats.