Chandigarh, March 16 Voting was underway on Monday for the two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana, with candidates from the BJP, Congress, and an Independent contesting.
BJP's Sanjay Bhatia, Karamvir Singh Boudh of the Congress, and Independent candidate Satish Nandal are in the race for the two seats. The BJP is supporting Nandal for the second seat.
Nandal had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 assembly elections as a BJP nominee and is currently designated as one of the party's state vice presidents.
Polling is being held from 9 am to 4 pm, and votes will be counted from 5 pm onwards.
Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, Minister Shyam Singh Rana, and other BJP MLAs, including Krishna Gahlawat and Mool Chand Sharma and Ram Kumar Gautam, were among the first to cast their votes.
With Nandal entering the fray, the polls are expected to witness a competitive contest.
Ahead of the polling, the main opposition party in Haryana, the Congress, moved its MLAs to Himachal Pradesh on Friday. They were accompanied by State Congress chief Rao Narender Singh, party general secretary in-charge of Haryana, B K Hariprasad, and some party MPs from the state, including Deepender Singh Hooda.
They were shifted to Kasauli in Solan district on Sunday and returned to Chandigarh on Monday morning after the voting for the two seats had commenced.
The Congress has 37 MLAs in the Haryana Assembly, but a few of them did not go to Himachal Pradesh due to family commitments or health reasons.
Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had also stayed back.
Notably, the Congress, with 37 members, has the required strength to help its candidate win a seat. However, the equation could change in case of cross-voting.
Ahead of the polling, Haryana BJP MLAs held a meeting in Chandigarh to strategize.
A training session was also held for the legislators, especially the first-timers, to explain the voting process to them in detail.
The ruling BJP has 48 MLAs, the INLD has two, and three are Independents in the 90-member Haryana assembly.
Each of the two candidates requires 31 votes to make it to the Rajya Sabha from Haryana.
The two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana fell vacant as BJP members Kiran Choudhry and Ram Chander Jangra are set to complete their terms on April 9.
Nandal would need 17 second preference votes from the BJP, three votes from the Independent MLAs, two votes from the Indian National Lok Dal, and at least eight votes from the Congress legislators for victory.
The INLD is yet to clarify its stand on whether it will support any of the contesting candidates or abstain from voting.
Nandal had lost to Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda from the Garhi-Sampla-Kiloi constituency in Rohtak district in the 2019 assembly polls. Before joining the BJP, he was also with the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD).
Nandal's candidature was proposed by three Independents – Savitri Jindal, Rajesh Joon, and Devender Kadyan – and seven BJP MLAs.
BJP's Bhatia is a former Lok Sabha MP from Karnal.
Congress' Boudh, a retired Haryana government employee, has been a Dalit activist who has raised issues pertaining to the community on various platforms.
Currently, Boudh, who is the coordinator of the National Scheduled Castes department of the Congress, is reportedly the choice of party leader Rahul Gandhi.
In 2016 and 2022, the BJP-backed Independents won the elections despite the Congress-backed candidates having the required numbers on their side.
In 2022, Congress candidate Ajay Maken lost to the BJP-JJP-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma despite the party having the required strength of 31 then to win the seat. The then Congress party legislator Kuldeep Bishnoi (now with the BJP) cross-voted while another vote was declared invalid.
In 2016, the votes of 14 Congress MLAs were declared invalid, leading to the loss of a party-backed Independent candidate who was otherwise expected to win.