Gandhinagar: All four Rajya Sabha candidates nominated by the BJP were declared elected unopposed on Thursday, as there were no other nominees in the fray and the main opposition party, Congress, did not field any candidate.An assembly secretariat statement said Raju Shukla, Mansinh Parmar, Mukesh Rathwa and Jitendra Kanjariya have been declared elected to the Rajya Sabha uncontested. Four Rajya Sabha seats will get vacated on June 21 as the terms of MPs Narhari Amin, Rambhai Mokariya, Ramila Bara and Shaktisinh Gohil will end.While Amin, Mokariya and Bara are from the BJP, Gohil is the lone Congress Rajya Sabha MP from the state.Returning officer and Gujarat legislative assembly secretary Chetan Pandya officially declared the four BJP nominees winners after noting that following the expiry of the deadline to withdraw nominations on Thursday, only four candidates remained in the fray for as many seats.“As the time for withdrawal of nomination papers ended on June 11, there remained only four candidates contesting for four seats. Returning officer Chetan Pandya declared all these four candidates as elected unopposed,” the Vidhan Sabha secretariat statement said.Shukla, 62, is currently in-charge of the BJP’s Surendranagar district unit. He had earlier served as president of the Kadi municipality and general secretary of the Mehsana district BJP. Rathwa (39), a tribal leader from Chhotaudepur district, currently serves as general secretary of the BJP’s district unit. Earlier, he was vice-president of the BJP’s youth wing.Parmar (45), who hails from Gir Somnath district, is the BJP OBC Morcha’s Gujarat unit president. Another prominent OBC leader, Kanjariya (39), hails from Devbhumi Dwarka district. He had earlier served as a member of a district panchayat executive committee.
