Punjab: Prominent businessman elected unopposed to RS

Chandigarh, Oct 16 (IANS) Punjab Vidhan Sabha Secretary-cum-Returning Officer Ram Lok Khatana on Thursday handed over the certificate of election to Rajya Sabha candidate and prominent industrialist Rajinder Gupta, who was elected unopposed to the upper House of Parliament.

With the family wealth of Rs 5053.03 crore, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Gupta does not own a car or any agricultural land. The certificate was given to him in the presence of Vidhan Sabha Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan.

Gupta was accompanied by his wife, Madhu Gupta. After the scrutiny of the nomination papers of independent candidate Navneet Chaturvedi, Gupta and his spouse Madhu were the only candidates in the fray.

Meanwhile, a trial court in Ropar on Thursday sent Chaturvedi, the main accused in the Rajya Sabha bypoll forgery case involving 10 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators, to police custody till October 23.

A case of forgery, impersonation, and criminal conspiracy was registered against him for allegedly using the forged signature and name of AAP legislator from Ropar, Dinesh Chadha, in nomination papers.

After nearly a 28-hour-long confrontation between Chandigarh Police and Punjab Police over the custody, the latter on Wednesday evening arrested Chaturvedi from the Sector 3 police station in Chandigarh.

Chaturvedi, who claims to be the president of the Janata Party (India) and hails from Jaipur, had filed two sets of nomination papers as an independent candidate. In his first set of papers, filed on October 6, he named 10 AAP MLAs as his proposers without their signatures.

He submitted a second set of papers on October 13, which carried the names of the 10 AAP MLAs as his proposers, along with their signatures. During scrutiny, his papers were rejected as the signatures of all 10 MLAs were allegedly found to be forged.

--IANS

vg/dan