RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav
Credit: AICC via PTI Photo
New Delhi: The NDA's stupendous victory in the Bihar assembly polls will help it bag all Rajya Sabha seats from the state in the coming years, while the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) will have no representation in the upper house when the next assembly elections are held there.
The RJD currently has five seats in the Rajya Sabha and the Congress has one seat, out of a total of 16 Rajya Sabha seats from Bihar.
With the next round of Rajya Sabha polls slated early next year, when the tenure of two RJD MPs - Prem Chand Gupta and A D Singh -- will end, the numbers are stacked in favour of the NDA, allowing the ruling alliance to wrest these seats.
The tenure of the NDA members -- Harivansh, Ram Nath Thakur (both JDU) and Upendra Kushwaha (RLM) -- will also end on April 9, 2026.
For winning a seat in the next round of biennial elections (for Rajya Sabha) for five seats from Bihar, each candidate requires a minimum of 42 votes, experts say.
The Mahagathbandhan has a total of 35 seats in the 243-member Bihar assembly. This includes RJD, which won 25 seats, and the Congress with six seats, together with two of CPI-ML, one of CPI-M and one of the Indian Inclusive Party (IIP).
The subsequent election will be held in early 2028 when the tenure of Faiyaz Ahmad of the RJD, Satish Chandra Dubey, Manan Kumar Mishra and Sambhu Sharan Patel (all BJP) and Khiru Mahto of JDU ends on July 7, 2028.
After this, the Rajya Sabha election from the state is slated in early 2030 when the tenures of Dharamshila Gupta, Bhim Singh (both BJP) and Sanjay Kumar Jha of JDU, besides Manoj Kumar Jha and Sanjay Yadav (both RJD) and Akhilesh Prasad Singh of Congress will end on April 2, 2030.
The Opposition parties do not have the numbers to win these seats. This will help increase the NDA number in the Upper House where the BJP still does not have a majority of its own.