Polls to 59 RS seats on Mar 23

Elections to 59 Rajya Sabha seats across 17 states, including four in Karnataka, will be held on March 23, the Election Commission announced on Friday.

Prominent members who are retiring from the membership of the Upper House include Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Ravishankar Prasad, Prakash Javadekar, Dharmendra Pradhan, J P Nadda, Thawarchand Gehlot, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala and Ramdas Athawale.

In Karnataka, the four retiring memers are Rajeev Chandrashekhar (Independent), K Rahman Khan (Congress), Basawraj Patil and Rangasayee Ramakrishna (both BJP).

The ruling Congress will be in a position to send three of its candidates to the Rajya Sabha, while BJP can send one.

Other prominent retirees include Jaya Bachchan and Naresh Agarwal (both SP), K Chiranjeevi, Renuka Chowdhary, Rajeev Shukla, Abhishek Manu Singhvi (all Congress), senior BJP leader Bhupendra Yadav and controversial leader Vinay Katiyar.

The largest number of vacancies  - 10  - are in Uttar Pradesh  and there are six each in Bihar and Maharashtra, five each in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, four in Gujarat and three each in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Odisha and Rajasthan.

The biggest beneficiary of the Rajya Sabha elections is expected to be the BJP, which will be in a position to win most of the seats in Bihar, MP, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Besides the biennial elections to 58 seats, bypoll will be held for one Rajya Sabha seat in Kerala that fell vacant after the resignation of M P Veerendra Kumar in December. His term was to end in April, 2022.

Rajya Sabha members have a six-year tenure with one-third retiring every two years.

The BJP has 58 members in the Rajya Sabha and its tally is expected to rise at least by nine after the elections.

However, the BJP, along with its allies, will still be short of the half-way mark of 123 seats in the 245-member Rajya Sabha.