DMK candidate Abdulla elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha in bypoll

Chennai: DMK nominee M Mohamed Abdulla was on Friday declared elected unopposed in the byelection for a Rajya Sabha seat from Tamil Nadu which fell vacant due to the death of AIADMK member A Mohammedjan.

With his election, the DMK’s strength in the RS would go up to eight while the AIADMK has six members which includes its Puducherry MP.

Abdulla, who hails from Pudukottai in Tamil Nadu was the only candidate from a political party to file his papers and his nomination paper was the only one found to be valid and it was duly accepted by authorities. The main opposition AIADMK did not field a candidate and the nominations of three independents were rejected.

Even if there had been a contest, the DMK could have won easily as the ruling party, alongwith its allies has a strength of 159 MLAs in the 234-member House. The AIADMK’s has 66 MLAs and its allies BJP and PMK has four and five MLAs respectively.

The Election Commission had last month announced September 13 as the date of bypoll to the RS seat from Tamil Nadu which fell vacant due to the AIADMK member’s death.

A legislative assembly secretariat release here said ”Abdulla, sponsored by the DMK has been duly elected to the Rajya Sabha.” In July 2019, AIADMK’s Mohammedjan, a former state Minister was elected to the Upper House of Parliament. He died in March this year at the age of 72. His term in the upper house was between 2021 and 2025.

With Abdulla’s election, the vacancy in RS from TN has come down to two, which are the seats recently vacated by AIADMK members. Tamil Nadu has 18 seats in the RS. K P Munusamy and R Vaithilingam, AIADMK leaders had resigned from the Council of states after they won the Assembly polls. The DMK had demanded that the Election Commission hold separate bypolls to the three vacancies from Tamil Nadu.