NDA candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh elected Rajya Sabha Dy Chairman

Moneycontrol News 

NDA candidate Harivansh Narayan Singh was elected the new Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha on Thursday after beating the Opposition's candidate BK Hariprasad.

Harivansh, who is a JD(U) MP from Bihar and a former journalist, received 125 of the 230 votes in the house. He beat Congress MP Hariprasad by 20 votes.

He was congratulated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad.

The post of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman has been lying vacant since the retirement of PJ Kurien on July 1.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who is recovering from a kidney transplant, attended Rajya Sabha for the first time in the Monsoon Session on Thursday.

Jaitley, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar and Azad accompanied Harivansh to the seat designated for the Deputy Chairman in the House, which is next to that of the Leader of the Opposition.

Hoping that Harivansh would do justice to all members of the House, Modi quipped that the situation in the House is such that the umpire faces more problems than the players.

The prime minister also said that Harivansh was offered a job by the Reserve Bank of India but did not take it.

Earlier, Leader of Opposition Azad hoped that the new Deputy Chairman would give enough opportunities to Opposition members to raise their issues. He said Harivansh has worked a lot to promote Hindi.

Jaitley said Harivansh had never made any kind of personal attack on anyone and hoped that as Deputy Chairman, he would improve the discourse in the House.

(With inputs from PTI)