BJP’s numbers to fall in Rajya Sabha

The ruling BJP’s strength in the Rajya Sabha will fall in the biennial elections to be held on June 10 to fill up 57 seats as its 25 seats are falling vacant and it would not be able to win all of them.

In fact, it will be losing 3 or 4 seats in Rajasthan and may not be able to win 3 seats it had bagged in Andhra last time, though it will increase its tally from Uttar Pradesh where elections are taking place for 11 seats and the BJP-led NDA will be winning 7 or 8 seats as against its current strength of 5.

UP sends 31 members to the Rajya Sabha and they are elected by the members of the assembly. Those retiring are three from Samajwadi Party, two from BSP and one from the Congress. BSP with a single MLA and the Congress with two MLAs are not in the race in this Rajya Sabha elections.

With 403 elected members in the UP assembly, a candidate requires at least 37 votes and as such the BJP-led alliance will win seven membes easily. The SP and its allies RLD and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party will be able to win three seats with their strength of 125. For the 11th seat, there will be a tie between BJP and SP, depending on the support of other parties, including Raja Bhaiya's Jansatta Congress having two MLAs and the lone MLA of Mayawati's BSP.

Kapil Sibal of Congress, BSP general secretary Satish Chandra Misra and Samajwadi Party's Reoti Raman Singh are among the members whose term from UP is ending. With the retirment of Misra and Ashok Sidharth, Ramji Gautam will be the lone BSP member in the House. Five retiring BJP members are Zafar Iaslam, Shiv Pratap Shukla, Sanjay Seth, Surendra Nagar and Jai Prakash Nishad. In case of Maharashtra, six members are retiring, including Union Minister Piyush Goyal and former union minister P Chidambaram of Congress and exunion minister Praful Patel from Congress. Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut and the BJP's Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and Vikas Haribhau Mahatme.

Four members retiring in Rajasthan are all from BJP, Om Prakash Mathur, Alphons Kannanthanam, Ramkumar Varma and Harshvardhan Singh.