Lucknow: Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Syed Zafar Islam was declared elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha on Friday. Election officer Braj Bhushan Dubey said that “he has been declared elected”.
The deadline for withdrawal of nomination was till 3 pm on Friday, but no candidate other than Zafar was in the fray. The election was to be held on 11 September. This seat of Rajya Sabha was vacant after the demise of Samajwadi Party MP Amar Singh. Singh died in Singapore on August 1.
Zafar’s term will last until July 4, 2022. On Tuesday, Govind Narayan Shukla of BJP filed his nomination for the Rajya Sabha seat. After this, Independent candidate Mahesh Chandra Sharma also filed his form.
The name of Zafar Islam is also special this time because he played a big role in bringing Jyotiraditya Scindia, former Congress leader active in Madhya Pradesh Congress politics, to BJP. Scindia joined hands with some of his supporting legislators, following which Kamal Nath’s government fell in the state and BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s power once again returned.
Zafar Islam’s candidacy is also special because so far in the history of BJP, there have been only six Muslim MPs – Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Shahnawaz Hussain, Sikander Bakht (Rajya Sabha) and Arif Baig, MJ Akbar and Nazma Heptulla. Syed Zafar Islam will be the seventh Muslim MP.
