By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 31 May: BJP candidate Dr Kalpana Saini today filed her nomination for the lone vacant Rajay Sabha seat in Uttarakhand. She filed her nomination papers at the Election Office in the Vidhan Sabha Bhawan in the presence of senior BJP leaders including BJP State President Madan Kaushik and Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. Today was the last day for filing nominations. As Dr Saini is the only candidate in the fray after Congress decided not to contest the Rajya Sabha election in Uttarakhand and no other candidate filed nomination, she will be declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha. In Uttarakhand’s history, several uncontested victories have been seen since there is always just one vacancy at a time. Therefore the second and third choice options are never exercised.
Earlier in the morning, the party’s state president, Madan Kaushik, had called a meeting of all the MLAs at the state office in this regard.
After the meeting, the party candidate Dr Saini reached the Vidhan Mandal Bhawan, where she filed her nomination papers in the presence of senior party leaders. On this occasion, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami, State President Madan Kaushik, state party in-charge Dushyant Gautam, State co-in-charge Rekha Verma, State General Secretary (Organisation) Ajay Kumar, Haridwar MP Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, Union Minister of State Ajay Bhatt, Cabinet Minister Prem Aggarwal and many party MLAs were present.
Dr Saini will be the third woman to represent Uttarakhand in the Rajya Sabha after Manorama Dobriyal Sharma of Congress and Sushma Swaraj of BJP.