Ram Vilas Paswan elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Bihar

PATNA: Union minister and Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan was on Friday elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar.

He was declared elected and the certificate was handed over to him, Bateshwar Nath Pandey, the Returning Officer and secretary to Bihar Legislative Assembly.

The certificate of election was given to him in presence of a host of senior NDA leaders including Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

The Lok Janshakti Party chief has been elected to the Upper House in a by-poll necessitated by the resignation of his cabinet colleague Ravi Shankar Prasad, who got elected to the Lok Sabha from the Patna Sahib seat in the general elections.

This is the second time that Paswan, who began his political career as a Sanyukt Socialist Party MLA in the 1960s, has been elected to the Rajya Sabha.

His previous election to the Upper House was in 2010 when he entered the Parliament with support of his then ally the RJD a year after having lost his Hajipur Lok Sabha seat.

He resigned from the Rajya Sabha in 2014, two years ahead of the expiry of his term, when he wrested back the Hajipur contesting as an NDA candidate.

Paswan had announced his decision not to contest the Lok Sabha polls this time and to choose the Rajya Sabha route instead when the NDA in Bihar, comprising BJP, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and LJP came out with its seat-sharing plan last year.

The Hajipur seat, which he won a number of times, on a couple of occasions with a record margin, has been retained for his party by his younger brother and state LJP president Pashupati Kumar Paras.