New Delhi: The Election Commission on Thursday announced that polling will be held on June 10 to fill 57 Rajya Sabha seats in 15 states that fell vacant due to retirement of members on different dates between June and August.
Prominent among the retirees are Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Congress leaders Ambika Soni, Jairam Ramesh and Kapil Sibal and BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra. The members are retiring between June 21 and August 1.
The BJP is set to increase its members in the Upper House from Uttar Pradesh, while the BSP and Congress will face major defeats in the upcoming elections for 11 seats in the Upper House from the state.
While 11 seats are falling vacant in Uttar Pradesh, six members each from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, five from Bihar and four each from Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka are retiring. Three members each from Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each from Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Jharkhand and Haryana and one member each from Uttarakhand are also retiring. The notification for voting will be issued on May 24 and polling will be held on June 10. As per the established convention, the counting of votes will take place one hour after the polling is over. Most of the newly elected members are expected to vote in a presidential election to be held sometime in July.
Uttar Pradesh sends 31 members to the Rajya Sabha. Of the 11 MPs retiring from the state, five are from the BJP, three from the SP, two from the BSP and one from the Congress. With 403 elected members in the UP Assembly, a candidate would need at least 37 votes to win. The results of the recently held assembly elections have changed the equation this time. With 273 MLAs, the BJP-led NDA will be able to easily get seven members elected, while the SP and its allies (RLD and SBSP), with a strength of 125 MLAs, will be able to ensure a victory for three candidates.
For the 11th seat, both the SP and the BJP will try to garner the support of other parties including Raja Bhaiya’s Jansatta Dal Loktantrik and Congress, which has two MLAs each and Mayawati’s BSP’s lone MLA.
After Sibal retires, the Congress representation in the Upper House from the state will be reduced to zero. Two senior BSP leaders – Satish Chandra Mishra and Ashok Siddharth – will retire in July after which it will have only one member Ramji Gautam in the Upper House. The five retired BJP RS MPs are Zafar Islam, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Sanjay Seth, Surendra Nagar and Jai Prakash Nishad. Those who completed their term in the SP include former UP Legislative Council president Sukhram Singh Yadav, whose son Mohit has joined the BJP. Apart from Yadav, the tenure of Revati Raman Singh and Vishambhar Prasad Nishad will also end in July.