Key points:
- Out of the 10 Uttar Pradesh seats, the BJP is set to win eight and also, grab the only Uttarakhand seat that will go to the polls on November 9.
- Last year, Sena left the NDA and joined the NCP and Congress to establish the government of the state.
- While the NDA will not be able to breach the majority mark in this election round.
- The ranking of candidates will be provided by each MLA according to his or her preference.
- You will find that in the last two years, with the help of other parties, the BJP has managed to get its way into the Rajya Sabha.
The upcoming biennial elections in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh will allow the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) to raise its Rajya Sabha tally to 92 leaders and compensate for defeats due to the withdrawal of two main alliances, the Shiv Sena and the Akali Dal.
In the recent past, the Congress-led Opposition’s count is likely to go down below 100 for the first time, making more space for the Narendra Modi government to force Upper House rules.
Majority of seats for BJP:
Out of the 10 Uttar Pradesh seats, the BJP is set to win eight and also, grab the only Uttarakhand seat that will go to the polls on November 9.
Next month, eleven Rajya Sabha leaders will resign, necessitating the biennial polls last round of this year.
Of these 11 seats, only three from Uttar Pradesh are currently occupied by the ruling BJP. The Samajwadi Party, Congress, and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are dominated by the others.
The BJP’s net increase would be six seats, five from UP and the other from Uttarakhand, and from the existing 86, its count would rise to 92.
This is only enough to pay Shiv Sena and Akali Dal, the two primary allies who quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), for each of the three seats.
Shiv Sena’s Alliance with NCP:
After the Maharashtra assembly polls last year, Sena left the NDA and joined the NCP and Congress to establish the government of the state. Another valued ally of the BJP, the Akalis, quit the NDA over farm bills last month.
NDA may not breach the majority mark:
While the NDA will not be able to breach the majority mark in this election round, from 112 in the 245-member Assembly, its count will be improved to 118.
On the other side, the count for the opposition will go down from 101 to 95. The mark for the majority is 123.
Though members of the Lok Sabha are directly elected by the electorate, members of the Rajya Sabha come by a dynamic method of proportional representation and through the votes of their respective state MLAs.
The equation is: (total number of state MLAs ÷ number of voting seats +1) +1. Simply put, more party MLAs in an assembly implies more party seats in the Rajya Sabha.
The Ranking of Candidate:
The ranking of candidates will be provided by each MLA according to his or her preference. If a candidate collects the minimum votes necessary, he or she will be chosen.
However, if a candidate fails to receive the necessary votes in a race from the first preference of electors, the second preference votes will be counted.
Things which may help NDA to win:
The political clout of the NDA has helped it win support from regional outfits such as Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), Andhra Pradesh’s YSR Congress Party, Odisha’s Biju Janata Dal, and pass main bills including those on triple talaq and splintering Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories, even as it is in a numerical minority.
The Modi government faced the opposition heat in the Upper House during its initial days in office, where bills would be delayed on a regular basis. In an embarrassment to the government, amendments to the President’s speech were accepted on one occasion in the Opposition-dominated Rajya Sabha.
Sandeep Shastri the political analyst said:
“You will find that in the last two years, with the help of other parties, the BJP has managed to get its way into the Rajya Sabha,” political analyst Sandeep Shastri said.
“What is going to change now is that, without the support of other parties, the BJP can express itself further.
The gap you see between the 2014 NDA and the 2020 NDA (when it gained more seats in the national elections) is the same.
The cabinet does not have a non-BJP minister. A BJP consolidation is also expected to be observed in the Rajya Sabha.
