Tough fight in Rajya Sabha elections today amidst discussion of cross-voting: 10 facts

1. 41 leaders have already been elected unopposed for 56 seats. The list includes former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief JP Nadda, Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnav and L Murugan. Elections are to be held for 15 seats in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh.

2. In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has fielded eight candidates and the opposition Samajwadi Party three for the 10 Rajya Sabha seats, creating a tough race for one seat. The focus will be on how many first preference votes a candidate gets – the magic figure is 37.

3. The BJP is said to be hoping to get additional votes from Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal, which has nominally joined the NDA. BJP leaders have also claimed that at least 10 MLAs of Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party are in touch with them. The SP – which is in alliance with the Congress – has strongly denied this.

4. BJP has fielded former Union Minister RPN Singh, former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, senior state leader Amarpal Maurya, former Minister Sangeeta Balwant (Bind), party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh and former Agra Mayor Naveen Jain. Its eighth candidate is Sanjay Seth – a former Samajwadi Party member and an industrialist.

5. SP has fielded actor-MP Jaya Bachchan, retired IAS officer Alok Ranjan and Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman.

6. In Karnataka, the ruling Congress on Monday shifted its MLAs to a private hotel to prevent undue influence – a situation that has seen several reshuffles in the state’s volatile politics. State party chief and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar has denied any possibility of cross voting by party MLAs.

7. In Himachal Pradesh, BJP has forced a contest on the only seat in the state by fielding Harsh Mahajan against Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi. While the Congress has 40 MLAs and the BJP 25, the election will be seen as a battle of prestige for Chief Minister Sukhwinder Singh Sukhu.

8. Rajya Sabha MPs are elected by the MLAs through the proportional representation process with the single transferable vote (STV) system. MLAs will have to prepare a list of candidates in order of preference. Their first choice matters most – the candidate with the required number of first preference votes gets elected, otherwise the votes are transferred to their next choice.

9. The ruling BJP has 28 seats out of 56 and is expected to have at least 29 seats after the elections. India Bloc will gain one seat in Uttar Pradesh as SP is expected to increase its number of seats from one to two.

10. At present, the membership of Rajya Sabha is 245. Upper House MPs have a tenure of six years, and elections for 33 percent of the seats are held every two years.

post a comment