Lucknow: All eleven candidates in the fray, including Anil Ambani, Jaya Bachchan and Lalit Suri, were today elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in the biennial elections. The others who were elected unopposed were former Union Ministers Arun Shourie and Murli Manohar Joshi (both BJP), BSP leader Mayawati, Satish C Mishra (BSP), Bhagwati Singh and Ram Narayan Sahu, Nand Kishore and Kamal Akhtar (all SP). While Ambani stood as an independent supported by SP, Suri contested as an independent supported by BJP. Bachchan stood as an SP candidate. The results were announced by the Returning Officer R P Pandey at the close of withdrawal of nominations today under a revised schedule announced by the Election Commission earlier this week, when it asked the RO to rescrutinise the papers of two Congress nominees. Yesterday, after hearing arguments for two days, the RO had rejected the nomination papers of two Congress nominees M M Shukla and Harendra Aggarwal sticking to his earlier decision that their papers were "invalid". The Congress, however, had criticised the RO's decision and appealed to the Election Commission to withhold announcement of the results. After the Returning Officer's decision yesterday, the way was paved for the unopposed election of the 11 candidates.
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