Five elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Bihar

PATNA: BJP national vice-president C P Thakur, BJP in charge of Delhi Rabindra Kishore Sinha, former CM Karpoori Thakur's son Ramnath Thakur, chairperson of State Commission for Women Kahkashan Parveen and editor of a Hindi daily Harivansh Singh were on Friday declared elected to the Rajya Sabha unopposed for the five vacancies to take place on April 9.

Returning officer of the biennial Rajya Sabha poll, Phool Jha made the announcement of election as the deadline for withdrawal of nomination paper came to an end on Friday afternoon. Nominations were filed by only five candidates against the same number of vacancies.

Dr C P Thakur of BJP has been re-elected, while the remaining four are new candidates. Another successful BJP candidate, R K Sinha has assets of Rs 850 crore making him the richest member of the Upper House. Sinha, who started his career as a journalist in a local Hindi paper, owns a security agency which has its network abroad too. His company has a turnover of Rs 3,300 crore. He also runs a premier boarding school in Dehradun.

Ramnath Thakur of JD (U), who comes from an extremely backward caste, was a member in both Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar cabinet. He had lost the 2010 assembly election. Kahkashan, also of JD (U), was earlier mayor of Bhagalpur and had unsuccessfully contested the 2010 assembly election from Kahalgaon against Sadanand Singh of Congress. The third JD (U) nominee to enter Rajya Sabha is Harivansh Singh, editor of a multi-edition Hindi daily.