The biennial Rajya Sabha elections are going to be held on 56 seats, for which voting is scheduled on February 27th, and the last date for filling out the nominations is February 15th. The present composition of the Rajya Sabha is like this: out of 245, the NDA has 116 members, and the opposition has 123 members, including 79 members of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc and 44 unallied members of various regional parties such as the Trinamool Congress, YSRCP, BJD, BRS AIADMK, etc. Six seats are vacant.
Of these 56 seats where the election is going to be held, 10 are from Uttar Pradesh, 6 from Maharashtra and Bihar, five from West Bengal, 5 from Madhya Pradesh, 4 from Gujarat and Karnataka, and three each from Andhra Pradesh. Telangana, Rajasthan, and one each from Odisha, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh.
What is the Rajya Sabha?
The Rajya Sabha, constitutionally known as the Council of the State, is the upper house of the Parliament of India. The vice president of India is an ex-official chairperson of the Rajya Sabha. Article 80 of the Constitution states that the total allowed membership of the Rajya Sabha is 250, out of which 238 members are directly elected based on the single transferable vote system, and 12 members are nominated by the president from different fields of literature, science, art, and social service. The elected members of the legislative assembly vote in the Rajya Sabha elections.
The current composition of the Rajya Sabha is 245 members (233 elected and 12 appointed) after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019. The members of the Rajya Sabha have a tenure of six years, and it is never a dissolving house of Parliament because every two years, one-third of new members are elected.
At present, Jagdeep Dhankhar, the Vice President of India, is the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, followed by Harivansh Narayan Singh of Janata Dal-United as a Deputy Chairman. Piyush Goyal, the cabinet minister, is the leader of the house, and Mallikarjun Kharge ( the national president of Congress) is the leader of the opposition in the house.
High-profile candidates for the Rajya Sabha Election 2024
Sonia Gandhi, the Congress parliamentary party chairperson and former All India Congress president, filed her first-ever nomination for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election from Rajasthan on Wednesday. Mrs. Gandhi, since 1999, has been a member of parliament from the Lok Sabha.
JP Nadda, the national president of the Bhartiya Janata Party, has been declared a party candidate from the state of Gujarat. He has been a member of the upper house since 2012.
Ashwini Vaishnav, the union railway minister and former IAS officer, has been declared a BJP candidate for Rajya Sabha from the State of Odisha. He has been a member of the Upper House since 2019.
Ashok Chavan, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, is the son of stalwart Congress leader Shankar Rao Chavan, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra. Ashok Chavan was the influential Congress leader of Maharashtra. But he resigned from the party and joined the BJP a day after quitting the Congress. He is declared the Rajya Sabha candidate of the BJP from Maharashtra.
Jaya Bachchan, a popular Indian actress and politician, has filed her nomination as a candidate of the Samajwadi Party from Uttar Pradesh. She has been elected to the Rajya Sabha four consecutive times.
Sagarika Ghose (journalist) of Trinamool Congress from Bengal; Abhishek Manu Singhavi (renowned lawyer) of Congress from Himachal Pradesh; RPN Singh (former union minister); Sudhanshu Trivedi (national spokesperson) of the BJP from U.P.; Sanjay Kumar Jha of JD (U) (he was the talking channel between the BJP and JD (U) during the recent U-Turn of Nitish Kumar; he has been rewarded for his work) from Bihar; and former congressmen and current Shinde Sena leader Milind Deora from Maharashtra are some of the famous candidates who are going to contest the polls on February 27.
