New Delhi: Congress nominee Karamveer Bauddh’s victory in the recently concluded election for two Rajya Sabha seats in Haryana is an anomaly. It was only the second such instance since 2017 where the Congress managed to win a Rajya Sabha election in a BJP-ruled state where the ruling party fielded a candidate without having the numbers.
The last time it happened was in Gujarat in 2017 when Ahmed Patel managed to pull it off despite large-scale defections and cross-voting in favour of the BJP. Incidentally, his friend, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, happened to be the man behind the Congress’ victory in the Rajya Sabha poll in the state this time around.
Data for Rajya Sabha polls from across the country shows that in the past 10 years, BJP and its allies at the time fielded a total of 200 candidates. Of these, 132 candidates won unopposed, since the NDA had adequate numbers.
In the case of 68 seats the BJP did not have the numbers to win, it still managed to win 62.
This means that only six times in the past ten years has the Congress defeated BJP or its allies in such situations.
Three of these victories came in Rajasthan and Karnataka, where the Congress was in power at the time.
In Rajasthan, the first victory came in 2020 when BJP fielded Onkar Singh Lakhawat as its second candidate despite having the numbers to get only one candidate elected. Temperatures soared, MLAs were herded to a five-star hotel in Jaipur, and counter-allegations were made by both parties in the run-up to the polls. Lakhawat eventually lost the chance to become a member of the Upper House.
Again in 2022 in Rajasthan, BJP-backed independent candidate Subhash Chandra lost his bid for a Rajya Sabha seat. The Congress was in power in the state from December 2018 to 2023.
And in 2024, BJP-ally JD(S) fielded a fifth candidate, D. Kupendra Reddy, in an election for four Rajya Sabha seats in Karnataka. Reddy lost. The Congress has been in power in the state since 2023.
Another somewhat similar case is that of the 2018 election for two Rajya Sabha seats from then BJP-ruled Jharkhand. The party’s candidate, Pradip Sonthalia, lost to Congress’ Dhiraj Sahu. However, in these polls, Sahu was the consensus candidate of the state’s opposition parties, with the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi meeting JMM leader Hemant Soren and securing his assurance for the Congress candidate’s support.
The Ahmed Patel win
The only time before the recently concluded Rajya Sabha polls that a Congress candidate won in a fiercely contested election for a Rajya Sabha seat in a BJP-ruled state—when the BJP also fielded a candidate it did not have the numbers to back—was in 2017 in Gujarat.
The polls were held for three Rajya Sabha seats. Amit Shah and Smriti Irani won comfortably. Then BJP president Shah, however, decided to make things difficult for the Congress candidate, Ahmed Patel, by pitting a Congress rebel against him as the BJP’s third candidate. Weeks before the Rajya Sabha election, six of the then 51 Congress MLAs rebelled, bringing the party’s strength down to 45. Patel needed 44 votes.
In a cliffhanger of an election, two Congress MLAs voted against Patel but he managed to romp home with the support of a JD(U) MLA.
Patel got 44 votes—the exact number needed to win, after the Election Commission declared the votes of the two rebels invalid for allegedly showing their ballot papers to Shah and Irani. Counting was put on hold for more than six hours after the Congress approached the Election Commission with the allegation.
The nail-biting contest saw Patel winning his final Rajya Sabha election by a whisker. It was seen as a battle between two giants of Indian politics—Amit Shah and Ahmed Patel.
“This is not just my victory. It is a defeat of the most blatant use of money power, muscle power and abuse of state machinery,” Patel had said on X (then Twitter) at the time.
The Haryana win
The 16 March Rajya Sabha elections saw high-voltage drama in the form of ‘cross-voting’ by Congress MLAs as well as technical disqualifications.
While BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia won with a comfortable margin, Bauddh managed to win with a wafer-thin margin, with 5 Congress MLAs having allegedly voted in favour of BJP-backed Independent Satish Nandal.
Four votes from the Congress and one from BJP were also declared invalid.
The Leader of the Opposition in Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda was instrumental in ensuring the Congress candidate’s win in a fiercely contested battle with the BJP in a BJP-ruled state.
But, Bauddh’s win in Haryana came at a cost. Haryana Congress acting state president Ram Kishan Gujjar quit the party and five MLAs, including Gujjar’s wife, are facing show-cause notices for allegedly voting against the party’s official candidate.
Congress MP Deepender Hooda also told reporters that the party high command had already initiated disciplinary proceedings against those who cross-voted.
The five legislators handed show-cause notices are: Shalley Chaudhary from Naraingarh, Renu Bala from Sadhaura, Mohammad Ilyas from Punhana, Mohammad Israil from Hathin, and Jarnail Singh from Ratia.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: ‘Traitors’: Congress expels 3 Odisha MLAs for ‘cross-voting’ in Rajya Sabha polls