New Delhi: The Election Commission on Friday announced that voting for 58 Rajya Sabha seats from 16 states will be held on March 23, 2018. The last date of filing nominations is March 12.
Fifty eight members of the Upper House are slated to complete their term in April 2018. At least 10 members have to be elected from the Hindi heartland of Uttar Pradesh.
BSP chief Mayawati’s seat will also go to poll in 2018. She had quit the Rajya Sabha in July 2017 as a mark of protest against the chair alleging that she was not being given an opportunity to raise the issues related to Dalits.
The members, whose terms are ending, include union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dharmendra Pradhan, J P Nadda, Thaawarchand Gehlot and Ramdas Athawale.
The number of seats up for grabs are 10 from Uttar Pradesh, six each from Bihar and Maharashtra, five each from Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, four members from Gujarat and Karnataka while the number is three each for Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha and Rajasthan.
Two members will retire from Jharkhand while Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have one retiring member each.
Besides the biennial elections, the EC also announced bypoll to a Rajya Sabha seat from Kerala after M P Veerendra Kumar resigned in December. His term was to end in April, 2022.
In August 2017, the BJP had overtaken Congress to become the largest political party in the Rajya Sabha with 58 members against 57 of the Congress.
Comments
0 comment