RS biennial elections for 56 seats on Feb 27

New Delhi: The Election Commission announced on Monday that the biennial Rajya Sabha elections will take place on February 27 for 56 seats across 15 states. This comes as the terms of several prominent members, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and BJP President J P Nadda, are set to end in April.

Nine Union Ministers, including Ashwini Vaishnaw (Railways), Dharmendra Pradhan (Education), Bhupendra Yadav (Environment), and Mansukh Mandaviya (Health), will also see their terms conclude.

The nomination process will begin on February 8 with the issuance of the notification. According to the Election Commission, 50 members will retire on April 2, while six will do so on April 3.

Notable retirements in April include BJD members Prashanta Nanda and Amar Patnaik from Odisha, BJP chief spokesperson Anil Baluni from Uttarakhand, Fisheries Minister Parshottam Rupala, Congress members Naranbhai Rathwa and Amee Yagnik from Gujarat, and others.

Members retiring from Maharashtra include Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan, MSME Minister Narayan Rane, former Union minister Prakash Javadekar, Congress member Kumar Ketkar NCP member Vandana Chavan, and Shiv Sena (UBT) member Anil Desai.

Uttar Pradesh will witness the highest number of vacancies, with 10 seats, followed by Maharashtra and Bihar with six each. Other states with vacancies include Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (five each), Karnataka and Gujarat (four each), Odisha, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh (three each), Rajasthan (two), and Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, and Chhattisgarh (one each).

For renomination to Rajya Sabha, BJP president J P Nadda will have to look for a seat outside his home state of Himachal Pradesh as the Congress is in power there.

The Congress can also look forward to sending its nominees to the Upper House of Parliament from Karnataka and Telangana -- the states where it came to power last year. In Karnataka, four Rajya Sabha members are retiring, and in Telangana, three.

In Maharashtra, the Rajya Sabha elections will be keenly watched after the political realignment in the state due to splits in the NCP and the Shiv Sena.

In Karnataka, the retiring members are Rajeev Chandrasekhar of the BJP and L Hanumanthaiah, G C Chandrashekhar and Syed Nasir Hussain of the Congress.

BRS’ Joginipally Santosh Kumar Ravichandra Vaddiraju and B Lingaiah Yadav are the retiring members from Telangana. The Congress, which is ruling in Telangana, can hope to send at least two of its nominees to Rajya Sabha from the state.

From West Bengal, Trinamool Congress members Abir Ranjan Biswas, Subhasish Chakraborty, Mohammed Nadimul Haque and Santanu Sen, and Congress member Abhishek Manu Singhvi are retiring from the Upper House of Parliament.

In Bihar, RJD members Manoj Kumar Jha and Ahmad Ashfaque Karim, JD(U) members Aneel Prasad Hegde and Bashistha Narain Singh, BJP member Sushil Kumar Modi and Congress member Akhilesh Prasad Singh are completing their tenures in the Rajya Sabha.

BJP members Anil Agrawal, Ashok Bajpai, Anil Jain, Kanta Kardam, Sakaldeep Rajbhar, GVL Narasimha Rao, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Sudhanshu Trivedi and Harnath Singh Yadav, and Samajwadi Party member Jaya Bachchan from Uttar Pradesh are retiring.

TDP member Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar, BJP member C M Ramesh and YSRCP member Prabhakar Reddy Vemireddy from Andhra Pradesh are retiring from Rajya Sabha.

BJP members Saroj Pandey and D P Vats are retiring from Chhattisgarh and Haryana respectively.

Separately, four nominated members are retiring in July while two nominated seats are vacant.

Among the nominated members retiring in July are Mahesh Jethmalani, Sonal Mansingh, Ram Shakal and Rakesh Sinha of the BJP.