The Congress on Monday approached the Election Commission and demanded that the election to both Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana be cancelled. The party alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtrya Swayamsevak Sangh had conspired to ensure the defeat of a candidate the Congress supported. Following the Congress complaint, the EC sought a report from the returning officer, who conducts the elections, in the Rajya Sabha polls.
Votes of 14 Congress MLAs were declared invalid in the Rajya Sabha elections on Saturday allegedly because they used their own pens, not the one provided by the Vidhab Sabha Secretariat, to cast their votes. As a result, independent candidate RK Anand, who was supported by the Indian National Lok Dal and Congress, lost to BJP-backed independent candidate and media magnate Subhash Chandra. Anand claimed that BJP legislator Aseem Goyal switched the pen at the voting enclosure to invalidate the Congress' ballots, The Indian Express reported.
INLD had held Congress leader, and former Haryana chief minister, BS Hooda and the BJP responsible for the invalidation of the 14 votes. A delegation of Congress leaders, including party general secretary BK Hariprasad and its Haryana chief Ashok Tanwar, accused the state government (led by BJP's Manohar Lal Khattar) of misusing the state machinery, as well as Chandra. They said the leaders had played “fraud on the democracy and Constitution”.
Legislators in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Haryana voted in the Rajya Sabha polls on Saturday. The Uttar Pradesh Assembly had the highest number of seats up for grabs in the election, all of which were won by the state's ruling Samajwadi Party. The SP on Monday suspended four of its legislators, however, allegedly for cross-voting in the polls.
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