Subrahmanyam Jaishankar clears the air on his nomination to Rajya Sabha

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar clears the air on his nomination to Rajya Sabha

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar Minister of External Affairs of India has defended his election to the Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in a reply to the Supreme Court affirm that there was no violation of law.

Mr Jaishankar's election in 2019 from one of the two seats vacated by Union Ministers Amit Shah and Smriti Irani was challenged by Gaurav Hemantbhai Pandya, the Congress candidate who had lost. Mr Jaishankar, in his affidavit, allegedly the voting procedure acquire by the Election Commission did not violate any law. The External Affairs Minister stated that the Congress leader urged about "based on misrepresentation of facts and not understanding the correct law position".

Polls were conducted in May 2019 for the seats which was vacated by the 2 ministers that was Amit Shah and Smriti Irani after they won the Lok Sabha election. The polls were conducted through separate voting process and the BJP won both seats. The Congress raised the questioned that it would have won one of the seats if the polls were held together on the basis of proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote as per the law. In this, the lawmakers list their order of preference for each candidate. The candidate that is the first choice for more voters wins. Each lawmaker's vote is counted only once. The BJP had 100  lawmakers and on the other hand Congress had 71 in the Gujarat assembly. The elections were held separately, where a candidate needed only 50 per cent of the votes (88) to win. To hold the voting separately was "illegal and in violation of the constitution", the Congress candidate says in his petition.

But according to the government, it has been a consistent practice by the Election Commission "since 2009" to issue separate notifications for by-polls to the Rajya Sabha.