Newly elected members of the Rajya Sabha, Rajinder Gupta and Sat Paul Sharma, were administered the oath of office by Vice President CP Radhakrishnan on Thursday. Gupta of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was elected an MP from Punjab.
Sharma of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took oath as an MP representing Jammu and Kashmir. Gupta took the oath at a brief function in Parliament House in Punjabi, while Sharma did it in Hindi. Gupta, an industrialist, was nominated by the AAP, which is in power in Punjab.
Sharma is the president of the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP. He is a chartered accountant by profession and has earlier served as a cabinet minister in the J-K government. He was elected a member of the Legislative Assembly from the Jammu West constituency in 2014, when he won by 51,000 votes, the biggest margin then.
BJP President JP Nadda and Union Minister Jitendra Singh were present at the swearing-in ceremony, besides the BJP’s Jammu and Kashmir in-charge, Tarun Chugh. The families of both MPs were present at the oath-taking.
Gupta was elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab as he was the lone candidate in the fray. The AAP, which nominated Gupta as its candidate for the October 24 RS bypoll, enjoys an overwhelming majority with 93 members in the 117-member state assembly.
The seat fell vacant after AAP’s Sanjeev Arora stepped down from the Upper House following his election to the state assembly. He has since been inducted into the Punjab Cabinet.
Gupta, the chairman emeritus of Trident Group, recently resigned as vice-chairman of the state economic policy and planning board, and as chairperson of the Kali Devi temple advisory committee. Sharma won one of the four RS seats which went to polls in J-K.
The Union territory, with four seats in Rajya Sabha, had been unrepresented in the Upper House of Parliament since February 15, 2021, the day Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway finished their term. Two other members, Fayaz Ahmed Mir and Shamsheer Singh Manhas, completed their term on February 10, the same year.
