In a jolt to the Congress, the BJP’s Krishan Lal Panwar and the saffron party-backed Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma were declared elected for the two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana, after a high drama over allegations of violations of polling rules that delayed the counting by more than seven hours. The counting of votes began past midnight and the results were announced after 2 am on Saturday. According to Election Commission officials, Congress candidate Ajay Maken did not get enough votes. The party said one of its MLAs cross-voted while the vote of an MLA was declared invalid.
Returning Officer RK Nandal said Panwar got 36 votes, while Sharma got 23 first preference votes and 6.6 transferred from the BJP, taking his tally to 29.6. It was a photo-finish as Maken got 29 votes, but lost on account of no second preference votes. While the value of votes polled by the BJP was 3,600, securing the first seat for Panwar, Sharma won the second seat with a vote value of 2,960, including 660 that got transferred from the BJP candidate as second preference votes. The Congress’ value of votes was 2,900.