JOIN USThe latest round of Rajya Sabha elections has seen the BJP increasing its strength in the Upper House where it has never enjoyed a majority. It won eight of the 19 seats which were contested, and five candidates, including four from Karnataka, were elected unopposed. The NDA, led by the BJP, now has a tally of 101 in the 245-member House. With the help of parties like the BJD, the AIADMK and the YSR Congress, it can cross the half-way mark and push through legislations in the House. The lack of a majority in the Rajya Sabha had prompted the party to resort to many questionable manoeuvres in the past. The gradual increase in numbers has taken the party to a comfortable position, though a majority is still far off.
The BJP has not had any major victory in state assembly elections in recent years which would have helped it to naturally increase its strength in the Rajya Sabha. So it has tried to increase its strength in the House by other means. The Telugu Desam Party’s (TDP) contingent of four in the House en masse defected to the BJP last year, beating the anti-defection law. It has perfected the strategy of weaning members from the Congress or regional parties to destabilise state governments and form its own governments, as it did in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. The re-election of the defecting members would increase the strength in the House and help send more members to the Rajya Sabha. An operation was perhaps attempted in Rajasthan before the latest round of elections but it did not succeed, at least for the time being. Defections have also been tried specifically for the Rajya Sabha elections, sometimes in retail but on a bigger scale also, as In Gujarat in 2018 and even now. Because of the resignation of eight Congress MLAs in the state in recent weeks, the BJP was able to get one more candidate elected to the Upper House, than the two it could normally have.
It is unfortunate that in the attempts and manoeuvres to increase the number of members in the Rajya Sabha, the role and function of the House are lost altogether. Of the 61 vacancies being filled up now, 43 are accounted for by first-timers. Some of them may have some experience in the Lok Sabha. But generally, the Rajya Sabha has been losing its status as the House of Elders who, with their experience and wisdom, would raise the proceedings in the House to a higher and more mature level.