New Delhi, August 9: National Democratic Alliance (NDA) candidate Harvansh Narayan Singh has been elected as the Deputy Chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. A total of 125 votes were polled in favour of Singh, while The Congress Candidate BK Hariprasad got 105 votes. The Shivsena and The Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) voted in favour of the NDA Candidate. However, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and YSRCP abstained from the voting.

Harivansh Narayan Singh is a politician from JDU. He was born on June 30, 1956, in Balliya district of Uttar Pradesh. He pursued Diploma in journalism from Banaras Hindu University.  After pursuing journalism he got selected for The Times of India as a trainee reporter. In 1981, the deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha worked as a sub-editor in Dharamyug. After working for Bank of India in Hyderabad and Patna, he returned to Journalism in 1984 and worked as an associate editor in Anand Bazaar Patrika group till 1989. Singh was elected for Rajya Sabha from Bihar in 2014.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi also congratulated Singh on becoming the deputy chairperson of the upper house. He said, “I congratulate Harivansh ji on behalf of the whole house. He has been blessed with the talent of writing. He was also a favourite of former PM Chandra Shekhar ji.”

In Rajya Sabha NDA has 89 members, out of which Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alone has 73 members. While the United Progressive (UPA) has the strength of 57 members, in which 50 members belong to the Congress. The anti-BJP parties which include BSP, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have four members each, while AAP and CPM have three and five members respectively, while Samajwadi Party and Trinamool Congress have the strength of 13 members each.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 09, 2018 12:17 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).