All three Rajya Sabha candidates from Rajasthan – two from the BJP and one from the Congress – were elected unopposed to the Upper House Thursday, officials said.
Returning Officer for the and Special Secretary of the Rajasthan Assembly, Bharat Bhushan Sharma, declared Bharatiya Janata Party candidates Alka Singh Gurjar and , and Indian National Congress candidate Neeraj Dangi, elected unopposed to the on Thursday. After the deadline for withdrawal of nominations ended, the RO declared all three elected and presented certificates to them.
The election was necessitated ahead of the completion of the tenures of BJP’s Ravneet Singh Bittu and Rajendra Gehlot and Congress’s Neeraj Dangi on June 21.
and Gurjar have been long-time workers of the BJP and this will be their first stint in the Rajya Sabha, while Neeraj Dangi retains his seat. The move to field Poonia and Gurjar was seen as an attempt to balance the influential Jat and Gujjar communities in the state, both of which lean towards the Congress, with the latter doing so in some pockets, especially in eastern Rajasthan.
Poonia has his roots in the RSS and has been a member of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), including as its state president.
He has also been the general secretary in BJP’s state unit, a former MLA from Amber Assembly in Jaipur, and party’s state president between 2019 and 2023. Post the LS 2024 polls, Poonia was appointed as party’s Haryana in charge in July 2024 and the BJP defied anti-incumbency to cross the halfway mark and form a government for the third consecutive term.
Alka Gurjar is currently BJP national secretary and co-in-charge of BJP, . She has been a former MLA from Bandikui in Dausa and has also been a state spokesperson and state vice president in BJP’s Rajasthan unit. She is married to Nathu Singh Gurjar, a former four-term MLA and two-term Lok Sabha MP from Rajasthan, who has also held several posts in the BJP and has been a minister under BJP governments in the state.
Neeraj Dangi has been a former president of the Rajasthan Pradesh Youth Congress and has been associated with the party in various capacities over the years, including as a screening committee member for Meghalaya and Karnataka Assembly elections, as well as in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, , Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. He has also been a spokesperson, general secretary and chairperson of the communication department in the party’s state unit.
With the Thursday election, both BJP and Congress will continue to have five Rajya Sabha members each from Rajasthan.
