Rajya Sabha polls: BJP's Gautam, Jangra & Congress' Deepender Hooda file nomination

BJP nominees Ram Chander Jangra, Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Congress' Deepender Singh Hooda, all candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections from Haryana, filed their nomination here on Friday.

All three Rajya Sabha seat aspirants submitted their nomination papers for the elections on Friday -- the last day fixed for the purpose. They are set to enter the Upper House of Parliament unopposed.

The last date for withdrawal of nominations is March 18.

While Jangra and Gautam were accompanied by Chief Minister M L Khattar, Home Minister Anil Vij, State BJP chief Subhash Barala and some party legislators, Deepender was accompanied by a majority of Congress legislators from the state including his father and former chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, to submit nomination papers to Returning Officer Ajit Balaji Joshi.

Deepender had been a three-time Lok Sabha member from Rohtak. In 2019, he narrowly lost to BJP's Arvind Sharma as the saffron party won all 10 parliamentary seats from the state.

Notably, the two Rajya Sabha vacancies are due to resignation of BJP's Ram Kumar Kashyap and the expiry of Congress leader Kumari Selja's term next month. Jangra and Deepender entered the race to fill these vacancies which will last a full term.

A third vacancy which necessitated a bypoll arose following the resignation of former Union minister and BJP leader Birender Singh and Gautam is set to enter the Upper House for the remainder of the term.

In the 90-member Haryana assembly, the BJP has 40 MLAs while its alliance partner JJP has 10. The main opposition Congress has 31 members while six out of seven independent MLAs have extended support to the BJP-JJP coalition government. The INLD has one MLA while one member belongs to the Haryana Lokhit Party.

Both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress had named their candidates on Thursday. BJP named its backward classes leader Jangra and party vice-president Gautam.