The Election Commission on Tuesday announced that biennial elections of 55 members of Rajya Sabha from 17 States retiring in April 2020 including seven from Maharashtra, six from Tamil Nadu, five from Bihar, four from Andhra Pradesh and two each from Telangana, Haryana and Chhattisgarh will be held on March 26. Of these, BJP currently has 18 MPs, while the Congress has 11. The rest of the seats belong to other parties. In all, BJP has 82 MPs in the Rajya Sabha, while the Congress has 46 MPs.
According to the EC, the counting will take place the same day. The Commission will issue the notification on March 6 with March 18 being set as the last date for withdrawal of nominations. The 17 states include Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur Rajasthan and Meghalaya.
Prominent leaders among those retiring are NCP leader Sharad Pawar, Union minister Ramdas Athawale (RPI-Athawale), Congress veteran Motilal Vora and former union minister Vijay Goel (BJP).
Of the seven MPs retiring from Maharashtra, two are of BJP and NCP, the Congress and Shiv Sena have one each and one is an independent. In the changed scenario, the alliance parties in the state government are likely to get the maximum seats together. In West Bengal, there are five vacacies and all are likely to go with the ruling TMC.
In Gujarat, the terms of the four seats expire on April 9. While the ruling BJP currently holds three of the four seats, one of them is held by Congress. The three BJP MPs whose term will end include Chunibhai Gohel from Junagadh, Shambhuprasad Tundiya from Ahmedabad and Lalsinh Vadodia from Anand. Madhusudan Mistry is the Congress MP who will retire on April 9.
Among those who are retiring are K Selvaraj, Tiruchi Siva, S Muthukaruppan, Rangarajan and Vijila Sathyananth from Tamil Nadu, Mohd Ali Khan, Thota Seetharam Laxmi and K Keshava Rao from Andhra Pradesh and KVP Ramachandra Rao and Garikapati Mohan Rao from Telangana.
In Andhra Pradesh, the ruling YSR Congress is likely to win all the four seats, taking its number to six from two earlier
In Bihar, JD-U has three of the five retiring members - Deputy Chairman Harivansh, Kahkashan Parveen and Ram Nath Thakur. The other two, RK Sinha and CP Thakur, are from the BJP.