Rajya Sabha polls: Ashok Gehlot govt suspends Internet services in Jaipur's Amer area amid poaching speculations

Jaipur (Rajasthan): Fearing poaching of legislators ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections, the Rajasthan government on Thursday ordered the suspension of internet services in the Amer area of Jaipur district for 12 hours till 9 am on Friday, where Congress MLAs are staying after they returned from Udaipur. The voice calls and broadband services in the area have not been suspended, according to a notification.

Polling for the upper House of the Parliament will take place on Friday. Notably, all the Congress MLAs have been shifted to Hotel Leela in Amer area where the internet services have been suspended. 

Rajasthan Congress MLAs were moved from Udaipur to Jaipur ahead of the voting for the Rajya Sabha elections that are slated to be held on Friday and party leaders are hoping to secure three seats in the Upper House of Parliament.

MLAs have been lodged at the Leela Palace Hotel on the outskirts of Jaipur on the penultimate day of Rajya Sabha voting. "Now it should be clear to them (BJP) that they can`t disintegrate the unity of Congress through their actions. Congress is intact and together the party will win all 3 seats tomorrow. After voting you can count, Congress will have all 126 votes," Congress leader Raghu Sharma said.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot also reiterated the confidence and negated any chance of cross-voting. "We are winning all three seats. We want results to be such that no one would even try to win here. All of us stand together. BJP is scared. They are going to the election commission, to Enforcement Directorate (ED), to courts," Gehlot said.

Elections to four seats of the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan will be held on Friday with the ruling Congress party having fielded 3 candidates Randeep Singh Surjewala, Mukul Wasnik and Pramod Tiwari. The Congress currently has 108 legislators in the 200-member state Assembly and needs 123 votes to win three seats.

The polling will take place from 9 am to 4 pm on Friday in the Assembly building and the counting will start from 5 pm. 

Polling set to take place amid poaching speculations

The polling to elect the members of the Upper House of the Parliament on 16 Rajya Sabha seats spread across four states will take place today amid speculations of horse-trading and fears of cross-voting. Polling is set to begin at 9 am and conclude at 4 pm.

Notably, all 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.  The polling, however, for the 16 seats spread across states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka will be held today due to the number of candidates exceeding the seats. 

Some prominent leaders, whose fates will be decided at 5 pm when the counting of the votes will take place, include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik. 

Notably, discontent had surfaced in the Congress party after the announcement of nominees for the Upper House.Notably in Maharashtra, the Congress party has fielded Imran Pratapgarhi for the polls while Praful Patel has been fielded from the NCP. Shiv Sena`s Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar have been given a run in the polls.

The MVA has shifted all its MLAs to a hotel in Mumbai fearing horse-trading. The alliance, however, is expressing confidence in bagging all the six seats from the state.

The BJP has fielded Dr Anil Bonde, Piyush Goyal and Dhananjay Mahadik from the state. Interestingly, there will be seven candidates in the fray for the six seats in the state.Notably, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray had convened a meeting of the MLAs in the state and exuded confidence in all the four candidates of the Maha Vikas Aghadi of winning the Rajya Sabha polls.

Coming upward to the Northern state, Haryana, polling will take place for two seats. Both BJP alliance and Congress legislators were shifted to resorts to slash possibilities of poaching.While the BJP-JJP alliance has lodged their MLAs to a resort in Chandigarh, the Congress leaders were moved to a resort in the city.

The Congress party has nominated senior leader Ajay Maken while the BJP has fielded former minister Krishan Lal Panwar. It is noteworthy that a senior leader of the state, Kuldeep Bishnoi is already upset with the party`s recent decisions. Besides this, another problem for the party has come in the form of the candidature of Kartikey Sharma whose father and father-in-law are former Congress leaders and are known to have influence in the state politics.

In Karnataka, JD(S) has fielded entrepreneur and social worker Kupendra Reddy as its first candidate in the Rajya Sabha election.The Congress had fielded Mansoor Ali Khan as its second candidate to corner the JD(S) and its bid to send Kupendra Reddy to the Rajya Sabha. Six candidates are in the fray for the Rajya Sabha poll to four seats for the June 10 Rajya Sabha polls from Karnataka.