NDA’s Harivansh Narayan Singh elected RS Deputy Chairman

Sambad English Bureau Published On : Aug 9, 2018 at 11:47 AM Updated On : Aug 10, 2018 at 1:25 PM

New Delhi: NDA candidate from Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United, Harivansh Narayan Singh was today elected as the Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha.

While Singh got 125 votes, 105 votes were in favour of UPA candidate BK Hariprasad. Notably, the post fell vacant after P.J. Kurien retired in July.

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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and YSR Congress abstained from the voting.

“I congratulate Harivansh ji on behalf of the whole house. He has been blessed with the talent of writing. He was also a favourite of former PM Chandra Shekhar ji,” said PM Narendra Modi.

Possibility of the NDA candidate’s victory increased yesterday after Odisha’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which has nine MPs in the Rajya Sabha, decided to support Singh in the election.

In a statement, the BJD said it has decided to support JD(U) since BJD and JD(U) have similar ideological origins emerging from the Jayaprakash Narayan movement.

The conch party also said the Congress candidate BK Hariprasad was the AICC in-charge of Odisha and vitriolic in his statements against the BJD.

The party waited till end for consensus over the constitutional post but it did not happen as two different candidates emerged, the statement said.