The Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday announced that elections for 11 Rajya Sabha seats – 10 from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand – will be held on November 9. The counting will also be held on the same day.
In the last Parliament session, Rajya Sabha bid farewell to 11 of its members who are due to retire in November this year. They include Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav, BSP’s Veer Singh and Raj Babbar of Congress. Others who will retire are: Javed Ali Khan (SP), P L Punia (Congress), Rajaram (BSP), Neeraj Shekhar (BJP), Arun Singh (BJP), Ravi Prakash Verma (SP) and Chandrapal Singh Yadav (SP).
Masks, thermal scanning, and use of sanitisers will be ensured to check the spread of coronavirus, which has affected over 70 lakh people in India so far. The government-mandated rules on social distancing will also be strictly followed, the EC said in a statement.
The EC The official statement further said that "chief electoral officers as observers in the two states" have been appointed, and the chief secretaries of the two states have been directed to "depute a senior officer to ensure the instructions regarding COVID-19 containment measures are compiled with while making arrangements for conducting the elections."