This is why the Rajya Sabha elections today won’t make much of a difference

The Modi government can breathe easy – not just yet. After struggling to push through its legislative agenda in the Rajya Sabha for want of numbers, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its partners are set to improve on their tally in the Upper House. However, the equations will change considerably not during the Rajya Sabha elections on Monday, but in July.

Of the 76 Rajya Sabha members whose terms are ending this year, 12 are retiring in April. The election to these seats will not alter the composition of the 250-member Upper House. The government tally will go up – and the Congress strength dip – when the elections of the remaining 64 seats are held in July.

Of the 12 members being elected on Monday, five are from Punjab where the position of the parties remains unaltered. The Congress has retained its two seats for which it chose former Punjab Congress chiefs Pratap Singh Bajwa and Shamsher Singh Dullo with an eye on next year’s state assembly elections. The Shiromani Akali Dal has also kept its two seats, having given another term to its sitting members Naresh Gujral and Sukhdev Dhindsa. The BJP has replaced Avinash Rai Khanna by Shwet Malik, a former mayor of Amritsar.

Of the three seats which fell vacant in Kerala, the Congress has retained one – former minister AK Antony has got another term – while the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has been able to hold on to only one of the two seats it had. It lost its second seat to the United Democratic Front, which nominated Veerendra Kumar of the Janata Dal (United).

The Congress had one seat in Himachal Pradesh for which it nominated deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma. Sharma has won unopposed. Similarly, the picture has not changed in Assam either – the Congress is keeping the two seats for which elections are to be held on Monday. The CPM has retained the lone seat from Tripura.

Changing equations

The National Democratic Alliance government is anxious to improve its numbers in the Rajya Sabha. Its floor managers were able to demonstrate in the first half of the on-going budget session of Parliament that it can do business by dividing the opposition and co-opting regional parties. But this success is not easy as it involves long back-channel parleys.

However, their burden is going to become lighter.

For starters, the government can improve its numbers from 48 to 55 immediately by filling the seven vacancies of nominated members who retired recently. While two members in this category, HK Dua and Ashok Ganguly, completed their terms last November, five more – Javed Akhtar, Mrinal Miri, Bhalchandra Mungekar, Mani Shankar Aiyar and B Jayashree – retired this month. Nominated members are theoretically free to vote according to their conscience but they usually go along with the party which nominates them.

Another breakthrough will come the ruling alliance’s way during the election for 64 Rajya Sabha seats in July. By then the Congress’s present tally of 66 is likely to fall by 14, which includes seven nominated members, while the BJP and its allies will pick up more seats, because of their increased numbers in the state assemblies of Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh.

Wrangling for seats

For starters, the BJP will be able to win all the four seats from Rajasthan, while the Congress has little chance of retaining its two seats in view of its virtual decimation in the last assembly election. Similarly, the Congress cannot hope to get a single seat in the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. As a result, its members – Jairam Ramesh, JD Seelam and Hanumanth Rao will not be returning to the Upper House. Ramesh is said to be lobbying for a seat from Karnataka where the Congress can get two clear winners. The party has already announced that sitting member Oscar Fernandes will be repeated.

Several Union ministers, including Piyush Goel, Nirmala Sitharaman, M Venkaiah Naidu, Suresh Prabhu, Chaudhry Birender Singh, YS Chowdhary and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, are retiring this year but the government will not have any problems in getting them re-elected.

While Goyal and Prabhu will sail through from their home state Maharashtra, the BJP will have to do some hard bargaining with the Telugu Desam Party to accommodate Sitharaman. Naidu was elected from Karnataka last time along with Aayyamur Manjunath but the BJP can win only one seat from here. MJ Akbar is likely to be nominated from Jharkhand again as he had only got a one-year term last time.

The situation in Bihar is also interesting as five Janata Dal (United) will be retiring this year but the party can only get two members re-elected as it will now have to accommodate the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress in view of their strength in the state assembly. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has a tough task as he has to choose from Sharad Yadav, KC Tyagi, Pawan Verma, Ghulam Rasool Baliyawi and RCP Singh.