Rajya Sabha Polls: BJP, UPA bag one seat each in Jharkhand

NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha polls for the two seats in Jharkhand on Friday concluded late in the night in which the NDA and the Opposition UPA managed to win one seat each.nnBJP’s Sameer Oraon and Dheeraj Sahu of the Congress emerged victorious in the polls while another BJP candidate Pradeep Sonthalia managed to secure the third position.nnOraon is the former MLA from Sisai Assembly seat in Gumla district and is known for his clean image in the party. At present, he is vice president of the state unit and has also led the ST wing of the party for quite some time.nnSahu, a Lohardaga-based businessman and a Congress functionary for 20 years,  he was first elected to the Upper House in 2009 for a brief tenure of 11 months before being re-elected to a full-term in July 2010.nnHailing from a family of politicians, Sahu has held various Congress posts in between 2005 and 2017, including vice-president and treasurer. He also contested the Lok Sabha polls from Chatra twice but lost.nnThe voting for the two seats of the state had commenced at 0900 hrs and ended at 1600 hrs during which a total of 80 MLAs cast their votes.nnOn the other hand Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) suspended its Latehar MLA Prakash Ram for cross voting in the Rajya Sabha polls.nnThe party has also issued a show cause notice to its legislator and has asked him to reply within 15 days or else he would be sacked from the party.Ram voted for the BJP candidate in the polls against the party order for voting for UPA candidate Dheeraj Sahu.nnJMM MLA from Silli Amit Mahto was the first candidate to cast his vote in the polls while BJP’s Anant Ojha was the last one to cast his ballot.nnA candidate needs 27 votes to get to the Upper House of Parliament and going by the numeric strength of the NDA, Sameer Oraon was 100 per cent guranteed of victory as he was the party’s first choice candidate.nnThe battle was for the second seat in which Sahu managed to edge past Pradeep Sonthalia of the BJP.nnWith UNI inputs