Elections to four Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu and Kashmir on October 24

The Union Territory to get representation in the Upper House after over four years

New Delhi: Jammu and Kashmir will get representation in the Rajya Sabha after a gap of four years and eight months, with the Election Commission on Wednesday announcing elections to all four seats in the Union Territory on October 24.

A byelection to one seat in Punjab, which became vacant after Rajya Sabha member Sanjeev Arora was elected to the State Assembly, will also be held on October 24.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Election Commission said the four seats will be filled by holding three separate elections, as each of these vacancies fell under different cycles.

Mir Mohd Fayaz and Shamsher Singh retired on February 10, 2021, but their elections were held in different cycles. Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway retired five days later, but were elected in a single cycle.

After Azad and Laway retired on February 15, 2021, Jammu and Kashmir remained unrepresented as there was no Assembly in place owing to the imposition of the President’s Rule after the revocation of special status and bifurcation of the State into two Union Territories.

I.N.D.I.A. bloc has 52 MLAs on its side, while the BJP has 28 MLAs. Five MLAs are non-aligned, though they may not go with the BJP. In such a scenario, the I.N.D.I.A. bloc may be able to comfortably send three leaders to the Rajya Sabha.

An election to the Assembly was held in October last year, but the Election Commission has announced the poll schedule only now. In between, the Election Commission was learnt to have proposed staggering of polls to avoid a situation where all the seats go to polls in one go, but the government was not in favour.

In a statement, the Election Commission said three notifications for Jammu and Kashmir will be issued on October 6, and the last date for nominations will be October 13 and that for withdrawal of nominations will be three days later.

Defending its decision to hold three separate polls for four seats, the Election Commission referred to a Delhi High Court judgment dismissing a petition by late Congress leader AK Walia in 1994 that the elections to three Rajya Sabha seats in Delhi should be held through a common election.

“We are of the view that once the seats have been divided into the three categories from the inception, the respondents were right in holding separate elections for each category. Now these three seats fall in three separate categories, so elections to these three seats have to be also separate,” the High Court had said.

A separate notification will be issued for the byelection in Punjab. The AAP is expected to win the seat as it has 93 out of 117 MLAs on its side. The Congress has just 16 MLAs.