The Bahujan Samaj Party numbers are going to come down in the Rajya Sabha after the Election Commission announced biennial elections for 10 seats from Uttar Pradesh. These seats will fall vacant next month. Six out of 10 seats are currently occupied by the BSP, which has been reduced to 80 seats in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. The BSP will face the number crunch as the composition from UP changes the game for it.
The SP that has 221 members in the State Assembly will now get six members, while the BSP gets two, the BJP one and one seat goes to the Congress and others. Sources in the BSP said the party leadership is yet to formalise the two names it wants for the Rajya Sabha.
Among the prominent members who are retiring on November 25 are former Samajwadi Party leader and now an Independent member Amar Singh, SP general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav, BSP’s Brijesh Pathak and BJP’s Kusum Rai. The other BSP members retiring are Rajaram, Akhilesh Dasgupta, Brijlal Khabari, Veer Singh and Avtar Singh Karimpur. Besides, former BJP Uttarakhand Chief Minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari’s seat also needs to be filled after it fell vacant following his election in lok Sabha from Nainital.
Rajya Sabha members are elected by the elected members of the legislative Assembly of that State in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote. According to the schedule, the process of filing nominations will begin from November 3 after the issuance of notification. November 10 is the last date of filing nominations and the last date of withdrawal is November 13. The polling and counting will take place on November 20.
The NDA, which is in minority in the Upper House as of now having 64 out of 240 members, will however, over the next two years will add more members after having won with good numbers in Haryana and Maharashtra. The BJP, which has 43 members compared to Congress with 68, hopes to overtake the Opposition over the next two years when 86 seats will be vacant in the Upper House when Bihar (5 seats), Jammu and Kashmir (4), Jharkhand (1), Kerala (6) and Tamil Nadu (6) go to the polls.