LUCKNOW: With 10 Rajya Sabha seats from UP are up for grabs, BJP is set to increase its strength in the Upper House by walking away with a major chunk of seats. The party has 304 MLAs in the 403-member Assembly,
The election, scheduled on November 9, is likely to be a one-sided affair with the ruling party likely to win eight-nine seats. The main opposition Samajwadi Party, which has 48 members on Assembly, may secure one seat for Prof Ram Gopal Yadav.
Coming close on the heels of the three-phase Bihar Assembly elections, the result of the Rajya Sabha polls will be announced on November 11.
The terms of 11 Rajya Sabha members of Parliament, including Union minister Hardeep Puri and senior Congress leaders PL Punia and Raj Babbar, are set to lapse on November 25. Other retiring members include Chandrapal Singh Yadav, Javed Ali Khan, Arun Singh, Neeraj Shekhar, Ravi Prakash Verma, Rajaram, Ramgopal Yadav, and Veer Singh. Raj Babbar represents Uttarakhand in the upper house.
While Arun Singh, Neeraj Shekhar, and Puri belong to the BJP; four-member including Chandrapal Singh Yadav, Javed Ali Khan, Ravi Prakash Verma, and Ram Gopal Yadav represents the SP. Rajaram and Veer Singh belong to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
Given the strength of the BJP in the Assembly, political experts feel that the need for voting may not arise on the majority of seats. Only one seat could need voting. It is for the first time during the last four decades that the elections for Rajya Sabha in the state are taking place with the ruling party having over 300 members in the Assembly.
In the first Assembly polls after the Independence, the Congress had won 388 seats in Uttar Pradesh, while in 1977 assembly polls, the Janata Party had secured 352 seats.
However, at present, the 403 member UP Assembly has a strength of only 395. In the given scenario, each member will need the support of at least 38 MLAs to reach Rajya Sabha from UP.
While the BJP has 304 MLAs, SP has 48, BSP has 18 members, Apna Dal has nine, Congress seven, Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party four and five Independents.
As per political scientist Dr. Ashutosh Mishra, such an equation had emerged after a long time. “Congress and BSP have such a limited strength that they can’t get even a single seat even if they join hands,” he said. SP can get a maximum of one seat and they will put their stakes on Prof Ram Gopal Yadav, uncle of party chief Akhilesh Yadav and cousin of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Political experts believe that even if the entire opposition gets united, they could manage to bag only two seats but that seems to be a remote possibility. As a result, only SP would be able to win only one seat.
The BJP may easily manage to win eight seats and if it tries harder, it may even win the ninth one, says Dr. Mishra. The contest for one seat may witness voting and the possibility of cross-voting from the opposition camp.
In the Rajya Sabha polls two years ago, many MLAs from the opposition had cross-voted in favour of a BJP candidate. In the present scenario, two Congress MLAs – Aditi Singh and Rakesh Singh and BSP's Ramveer Upadhyaya have already been quite vocal against their respective parties since last year.
UP has a quota of 31 seats in the Rajya Sabha, out of which BJP currently has 17, SP has eight, BSP has four and the Congress has two seats.