NEW DELHI: The biennial elections for 56 Rajya Sabha seats that would fall vacant in April, will be held on February 27. The Election Commission announced the schedule for the polls across 15 states on Monday.
Former PM Manmohan Singh, BJP president JP Nadda and nine Union ministers including railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, environment minister Bhupendra Yadav and health minister Mansukh Mandaviya are among the MPs retiring just before the Lok Sabha elections.
Nadda is a Rajya Sabha MP from his home state Himachal Pradesh, where the Congress is in power at present. Singh represents Rajasthan in the Upper House.
Uttar Pradesh will have maximum vacancies with 10 seats. This is followed by Bihar and Maharashtra, where the tenure of six MPs each will come to an end. The other states where vacancies will arise are Madhya Pradesh (5), West Bengal (5), Karnataka (4), Gujarat (4), Odisha (3), Telangana (3), Andhra Pradesh (3), and Rajasthan (3). Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Chhattisgarh will have one seat each.
A press note issued by the EC on Monday said that it had decided to conduct biennial elections to the Council of States for which the last date of filing nomination would be February 15. The counting of votes will take place on February 27.
“Adequate measures for close monitoring of the poll process by appointing observers shall be taken to ensure free and fair elections,” read the note.
BJP members Anil Agrawal, Ashok Bajpai, GVL Narasimha Rao, Sudhanshu Trivedi and Harnath Singh Yadav, and Samajwadi Party member Jaya Bachchan from Uttar Pradesh are among the MPs retiring. MoS for External Affairs V Muraleedharan, MSME Minister Narayan Rane, former Union minister Prakash Javadekar, Congress member Kumar Ketkar, NCP’s Vandana Chavan and Shiv Sena (UBT) member Anil Desai is completing their term as RS MPs from Maharashtra. After the splits in the Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, the RS polls in the state will be keenly observed.
Poll on Feb 27
The biennial elections for 56 Rajya Sabha seats across 15 states will be held on February 27. Uttar Pradesh will have maximum vacancies with 10 seats.