Dehradun: Uttarakhand Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Mahendra Bhatt was elected unopposed as a Rajya Sabha MP on Tuesday.
Bhatt filed his nomination for Rajya Sabha elections in the presence of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and other party leaders in Dehradun.
He is a Brahmin face from Chamoli district and his candidature is being seen as a balancing exercise in the state.
Mahendra Bhatt was also a candidate from the Badrinath assembly seat in the last assembly elections but lost his seat to Congress's candidate Rajendra Singh Bhandari.
CM Dhami, who was present during the nomination said, "I want to thank the central leadership and PM Modi that Mahendra Bhatt was nominated for Rajya Sabha. It is a proud moment for all of us. The party workers are also happy." In its latest list of candidates for the biennial Rajya Sabha polls released on February 14, the BJP fielded seven nominees, four for Gujarat and three for Maharashtra.
Apart from the party's national president, JP Nadda, the BJP fielded three other leaders from Gujarat namely, Govindbhai Dholakia, Mayankbhai Nayak and Jashvantsinh Parmar. The nominees for Maharashtra include Medha Kulkarni, Ajit Gopchhade and Ashok Chavan.
Also, the BJP has announced that it's nominating Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw from Odisha and L Murugan from Madhya Pradesh for the upcoming elections. Earlier, the party named 14 candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, including former Union Minister RPN Singh and party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi. —ANI
