Rajya Sabha Gears Up For Face-Off

10 vacancies in the Upper House after Rajya Sabha members were elected to the Lok Sabha.

The Rajya Sabha secretariat has notified vacancies on 10 seats after these Upper House members were elected to the Lok Sabha.

They included three Union ministers.

The secretariat announced the vacancies on Monday evening, setting in motion the process to fill these seats.

The Bharatiya Janata Party held seven of these seats, the Congress two and the Rashtriya Janata Dal one.

Two seats each are falling vacant from Bihar, Maharashtra and Assam and one each from Rajasthan, Tripura, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

The elections to these seats could mean the BJP win at least two seats that were with the Congress, one each in Haryana and Rajasthan.

The members, who are moving from the Upper House to the Lower House, include Deepender Singh Hooda, a Rajya Sabha MP from Haryana, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Haryana's Rohtak and K C Venugopal, a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Alappuzha in Kerala.

The BJP has the numbers in the Haryana and Rajasthan assemblies to win the two seats.

In Assam, two of the BJP's RaJya Sabha MPs, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, have been elected to the Lok Sabha.

However, winning both the seats falling vacant from Assam would turn out to be tricky for the BJP if the Congress-led INDIA bloc ties up with the All India United Democratic Front.

In Maharashtra, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, given its numbers, could retain both the seats, one of which was represented by Union Minister Piyush Goyal.

The two seats in Bihar are likely to be shared between the NDA and INDIA bloc.

Another vacancy, unrelated to the vacancies that have arisen because of the Lok Sabha elections, needs to be filled in Maharashtra, which the Maha Vikas Aghadi could win if elections for all three take place together.

In addition to the 10 seats, three MPs from Kerala are set to retire on July 1, and the process to fill these seats has begun.

The Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India-Marxist and Kerala Congress (Mani) hold a seat each.

There are also four nominated members set to retire in mid-July.

These are Mahesh Jethmalani, Ram Shakal, Rakesh Sinha and Sonal Mansingh. All four had joined the BJP after being nominated.

Parliament special session likely from June 24

The special session of Parliament, where the newly elected Lok Sabha members will take the oath, could take place from June 24 onwards, according to sources.

It could also see the Lok Sabha elect the Speaker and the address of the President to the joint sitting of the two Houses, sources said.

The special session, as was customary until then, was a short one for the purposes of MPs taking the oath in 2014.

However, in 2019, Parliament had an extended Budget session June 17 to August 7, 2019, which involved the MPs taking the oath, the election of the Speaker and also the tabling of the Budget.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com