EC sets new date to hold deferred polling to fill 18 Rajya Sabha vacancies

The Election Commission is set to hold polling to fill up the 18 vacancies in the Rajya Sabha on June 19 next as the government is now withdrawing the curbs it enforced to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

The EC on Monday announced that polling to elect the 18 members of the Rajya Sabha from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Rajasthan would be held on June 19 and the counting of votes would also take place on the same day.

The 17 of the 18 seats, which will go to polls on June 19, fell vacant on April 9, while the remaining one fell vacant on April 12.

The polling to fill up the Rajya Sabha vacancies had originally been scheduled on March 26. The process to submit the nomination had already been over and the final list of candidates had also been prepared, but the EC had to postpone polling in view of the lockdown imposed by the Centre and the State Governments to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

The poll-panel on April 3 further postponed the election process “beyond the prescribed term(s)” of the respective Rajya Sabha seats.

The EC had on February 25 announced the elections to fill up the 55 Rajya Sabha vacancies and issued the notification on March 6.

Thirty seven seats in the upper House of Parliament had already been filled up uncontested without requiring polling.

The EC on Monday stated that it had decided to hold the polling for the remaining 18 seats on June 19, after taking into account the reports of the Chief Electoral officers and the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on May 30 for phased withdrawal of the restrictive measures imposed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

The commission also decided that the Chief Secretaries of the State Governments would depute a senior officer to ensure compliance of the extant instructions regarding COVID-19 containment measures while making arrangements for conducting the polling.

The EC had on May 21 held polls to fill up the nine vacancies in the state legislative council of Maharashtra, even as the nationwide lockdown was still on.