Within a month of its Chintan Shivir calling for revamping the party, the Congress managed to keep its flock together, resulting in the party winning three seats in Rajasthan. Party leaders Mukul Wasnik, Randeep Surjewala, Pramod Tiwari were declared elected. The BJP's Ghanshyam Tiwari won, while the BJP-backed media baron Subhash Chandra lost from the state.
In Karnataka, the BJP won three seats. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, actor-politician Jaggesh and MLC Lahar Singh Siroya were elected in the state. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh too was elected to the upper house.
“They got more votes than the allotted ones, people from the other party helped us,” BJP general secretary C.T. Ravi said.
High drama unfolded in Haryana and Maharashtra as two Congress MLAs in Haryana, and three MLAs of ruling MVA in Maharashtra were accused of violating the norms as they showed their votes to someone other than the party election agent. Both the BJP and Congress approached the Election Commission over the issue.
The BJP, in its memorandum submitted to the EC, said in 2017 in Ahmed Patel case the EC had termed such votes, shown someone other than the party's election agent, as invalid. The party demanded that the votes be declared invalid, and asked the EC to stay the decision of the returning officer, who allowed the votes to be counted. The Congress, in a counter memorandum, said as their candidate was losing, the BJP was trying to delay the counting.
Owing to objections over the validity of the votes, the counting was halted in Haryana and Maharashtra.
The elections to fill 57 vacant seats across 15 states in Rajya Sabha were held. Forty-one candidates belonging to various parties in 11 states were declared unopposed. However, as BJP fielded additional candidates in four states – Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra—the elections were necessitated, forcing the opposite to work hard to gets its candidate elected. In Karnataka, as three parties had fielded a fourth candidate, the matter became muddled. BJP's Siroya won the election as he got votes from other parties as well.
The counting in Haryana was halted after BJP-supported Kartikeya Sharma, also a media baron, alleged that the returning officer did not pay heed to their complaints and declared the votes of two Congress MLAs—Kiran Choudhry and B.B. Batra—valid. The BJP approached the EC against the decision of the returning officer.
The counting will resume after EC gives its ruling.
