THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the State Election Commission expected to issue notification for assembly elections within next two weeks, the Rajya Sabha election due on April 21 is unlikely to be held.
Three Rajya Sabha (RS) seats will fall vacant with the end of tenures of Vayalar Ravi, Abdul Wahab and K K Ragesh. Though the vacancy arising from Jose K Mani’s resignation will have to be filled after the assembly election, a Legislature Secretariat official said by-election to the Rajya Sabha will not be clubbed along with the regular election. Jose resigned on January 9, 2021 even though his tenure runs till July 1, 2024.
RS members are elected by MLAs through proportional representation or a quota system. Legislators will be given ballot papers with names of all candidates in the fray. They will mark their order of preferences against each candidate’s name — 1 for top preference, 2 for next preference and so on.
The minimum number of votes a candidate has to win is called quota and excess voters are termed surplus. S V Unnikrishnan Nair, secretary, Legislature Secretariat told TNIE that once the election notification to the assembly election is announced, Rajya Sabha secretariat is unlikely to hold election to the upper house of the Parliament.
But another senior Legislature Secretariat official said the vacancy that falls due to Jose’s resignation will not be filled now, or else the seat sharing mechanism would be in the ratio of 3:1, three for LDF and one for UDF. (The ruling dispensation gets more votes as they are in majority in the assembly.)In current scenario, the vote sharing will be in the ratio of 2:1, i.e. excluding the RS by-election. As per Legislature Secretariat, each candidate in the fray would have to get 45 votes each (134 MLA’s divided by three seats = 44.6).
“With the announcing of the assembly election notification, the model code of conduct would come into effect. It would be difficult for all the MLAs to come to the assembly amid election campaign to vote for Rajya Sabha election. So in all likelihood, the RS polls will be held only after the Assembly polls,” said a senior Legislature Secretariat official.
Veteran Congress leader Aryadan Muhammed recalled a similar instance had happened in 1987. “If my memory serves me right, K Gopalan, then Janata Party leader who later joined the Congress, had submitted his nomination papers for the Rajya Sabha election in 1987. But by then, assembly election was announced. Then he was elected to the parliament after the new legislative assembly was constituted,” said Aryadan.
So in all likelihood, the 15th Legislative Assembly will be filling the four Rajya Sabha seats. Currently, A K Antony (Congress), Elamaram Kareem and K Somaprasad (both CPM), M V Shreyams Kumar (LJD) and Binoy Viswam (CPI) are the Rajya Sabha members from Kerala.