While BJP chief Amit Shah and union minister Smriti Irani will be elected from two Rajya Sabha seats, senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is struggling to get re-elected from the third with the BJP determined to stop him.

Reported by Rohit Bhan, Edited by Shylaja Varma

Voting has ended for three Rajya Sabha seats in Gujarat in an election that has become a huge prestige battle between the BJP and the Congress. BJP chief Amit Shah, who makes his debut in Parliament, and union minister Smriti Irani will win two seats with ease, but senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel is struggling to get re-elected from the third with the BJP determined to stop him. “Never seen such a tense and bitter battle in my entire political career,” Mr Patel told NDTV, but was confident he will make it. 176 Gujarat legislators have voted and results are expected later this evening.

Here are the top 10 developments in this story:

To win back his Rajya Sabha seat, Ahmed Patel needs 45 Gujarat legislators to vote for him. He was counting on 44 Congress MLAs to support him, but one of them is confirmed to have voted against him. This means he is now depending on Chhotubhai Asava, the lone Janata Dal (United) legislator and one of two MLAs from Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). The other said he would vote for the BJP.

Less than an hour into voting, veteran politician Shankersinh Vagehla called the election, declaring Ahmed Patel defeated. Mr Vaghela, seen to have scripted a rebellion in the Congress as revenge for the party sidelining him, said Mr Patel would “not even win 40 votes.” He confirmed he had voted against Mr Patel, saying, “Who will vote for a losing candidate.”

Mr Vaghela had exited the Congress two weeks ago and soon after six Congress MLAs resigned, three of them joining the BJP. One of them is the BJP’s third candidate today, Balwantsinh Rajput, a relative of Mr Vaghela.

The six who resigned can’t vote and that brought the strength of the 182-seat Gujarat Assembly down to 176. Each of the four candidates contesting today has to win 45 first preference votes – which means they have to be the first preference of 45 Gujarat legislators each.

45 of the BJP’s 121 MLAs will choose Amit Shah as their first preference, 45 will choose Smriti Irani, and the remaining 31 will choose Balwantsinh Rajput.

The Congress has 51 legislators in the assembly, including Shankersinh Vaghela, who remains a legislator. The party issued a whip or formal order for all its legislators to vote for Ahmed Patel warning that defiance will attract career-altering penalty.

But at least six of these 51 are known loyalists of Shankersinh Vaghela and the Congress is not counting on them at all. These include Mr Vaghela’s son Mahendrasinh Vaghela, who touched Amit Shah’s feet when he went into the Gujarat secretariat to vote.

If neither Ahmed Patel nor the BJP’s Balwantsinh Rajput gets 45 votes to win directly, second preference votes of each MLA will be counted. That will mean it’s game over for Ahmed Patel, given the BJP’s far superior numbers.

The Congress wants to prevent a possible defeat for Ahmed Patel today as being seen as a loss of face for party president Sonia Gandhi, whose political secretary Mr Patel is. Both he and his party stress that his important party role has nothing to do with today’s election.

A defeat for Ahmed Patel will also severely dent the morale of the Congress ahead of assembly elections in a state where it has steadily lost ground to the BJP in the last two decades. Equally, a win for the senior Congress leader will be a big shot in the arm for the party.