Ahmed Patel deals severe blow to BJP, wins RS poll

Gandhinagar: Ahmed Patel on Wednesday dealt a severe blow to the BJP when he won the Rajya Sabha election in Gujarat in a cliffhanger contest in which the top BJP leadership staked its all by backing a Congress defector.

BJP President Amit Shah also won the election to make his debut in parliament while Union Minister Smriti Irani got another term in the upper house.

Patel got 44 votes that was just enough to beat his rival Congress defector Balwantsinh Rajput and earn a fifth term in Rajya Sabha while Shah and Irani got 46 and 45 votes respectively in the counting that was delayed by over nine hours because of the Congress challenge in the Election Commission first and the BJP's objections before the returning officer past midnight.

Patel thanked his party MLAs, workers and the leadership for the victory and said under Rahul Gandhi's leadership, the Congress will get strength and win Gujarat assembly election.

The battle became bitter between the powerful BJP ruling both at the Centre and in Gujarat and the political secretary to Congress President Sonia Gandhi when defections were engineered from the Congress first by friend-turned-foe-turned ally Shankarsinh Vaghela and six other MLAs who resigned from the Congress.

From 57, the Congress strength came down to 51 when Vaghela quit the party while six of his loyalists quit the assembly. The strength further came down when six of the MLAs defected to the BJP reducing his backing to 45. The Congress had to shepherd 44 MLAs to Bengaluru to counter poaching by the BJP.

On the day of reckoning, Ahmed Patel had 44 in his bag along with the backing of one NCP and one JD-U MLA though there was day-long speculation on how the two allies voted.