Will fight tooth and nail in Rajya Sabha polls: BJP

BJP chief Amit Shah

New Delhi: Stating that it is confident of victory, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday asserted that it will fight tooth and nail in the upcoming Assembly poll under the aegis of the Election Commission of India.

Speaking to ANI here, the BJP leader Sudesh Verma said, "BJP is confident of victory on all seats for the simple fact that BJP has numbers and we have already seen that Congress is divided house. We will fight the election tooth and nail, constitutionally and legally under the aegis of Election Commission of India."

Verma further said that the Congress cannot blame the BJP for division in its own rank.

"The Congress party has to look invert and find out the problem of leadership," he added.

Speaking on the reports of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) to extend its support to BJP in Rajya Sabha polls, Party`s national spokesman GVL Narasimha Rao appealed to all political parties to select the candidature on merit.

"It is natural for the other political parties like NCP not to support the Congress candidate. We certainly appeal to all political party to select our candidature on merit and as far as Congress is concerned, it has demonstrated to Gujarat, to the rest of the country that it will enact any drama to lure it MLAs to win one RS seat."

Rao said that few Gujarat Congress MLAs have joined the BJP ahead of the polls, because they find the party to be unattractive, unappealing to the people of Gujarat.

After NCP leader Kandhal Jadeja announced that his party will be backing the BJP in the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat today, senior leader of the party Majid Memom also hinted confirmation.

Memom told ANI, "If Praful Patel ji has indeed said that our 2 NCP Gujarat MLAs will support BJP in RS polls then it must be correct."

The Gujarat Rajya Sabha election is slated to be held today for three seats. The BJP has fielded party president Amit Shah, Union Minister Smriti Irani and Balwantsinh Rajput.

The state has been witnessing political upheaval in the recent past. The political temperature in state had risen when six Congress MLAs joined BJP. The Congress accused BJP of horse-trading and sent its 44 MLAs from Gujarat to Bengaluru on July 29 to prevent their possible poaching by the ruling BJP ahead of the Rajya Sabha elections. The Income Tax department raided Bengaluru`s Eagleton Resort, which belonged to Karnataka`s Energy Minister DK Shivakumar. The Congress alleged resort was raided because its 44 MLAs were staying there. All the Gujarat Congress MLAs returned back to the state earlier in the day.