From Our Special Correspondent
NEW DELHI: The strength of opposition Congress in Rajya Sabha is set to reduce further as the party is expected to lose some of its seats in elections slated for this year to fill up 68 vacancies.
The setback will be mostly from the North East.
Assam used to send former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who represented the state in Rajya Sabha, all throughout his career after his failed attempt in Lok Sabha polls.
According to sources, the Congress could lose around nine of its 19 seats that are falling vacant due to its reduced strength in some states. This will include Meghalaya represented by Wansuk Syiem, which will now go to NPP.
Wansuk had won from Meghalaya for two terms.
The party will also lose its seats in Assam since it has lost power to BJP in the last Assembly polls.
Moreover, to add to its woes, veteran Congress member from Rajya Sabha, Bhubaneswar Kalita, resigned from his seat
and defected to BJP and might get re-elected on its ticket again.
The Congress is confident of retaining nine seats on its own and winning one or two more with the help of its allies.
The party is set to gain seats in states where it is in power — Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
The opposition’s strength will fall after elections are held to fill up 68 vacancies in April, June and November that may lead to the ruling NDA slowly inching towards the majority mark in the Upper House, sources say.
While 51 seats in Rajya Sabha will be falling vacant in April, five more will be in June, one in July and 11 in November this year.
Top Congress leaders, viz. Motilal Vora, Madhusudan Mistry, Kumari Selja, Digvijaya Singh, BK Hariprasad and MV Rajeev Gowda are among the top Congress leaders, whose tenures are ending in April and June. Of them, Vora, Selja and Singh are likely to be re-nominated by the party.
Besides, its leaders — Raj Babbar and PL Punia — are unlikely to get re-nomination from Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, where the ruling BJP is set to make major gains. One RS seat in Uttarakhand and 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh will fall vacant in November this year.
Many Congress leaders are vying to get Rajya Sabha seats from the party after a large number of them lost out in the last Lok Sabha elections.
There is speculation that the party may bring Priyanka Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Randeep Surjewala and RPN Singh, among others, to the upper house.
There are six vacancies coming up in Maharashtra, including that of NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, and the same number in Tamil Nadu.
There are five each falling vacant in West Bengal and Bihar, four each in Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The Congress is likely to bag two of the three seats in Rajasthan, two of the three in Madhya Pradesh, two in Chhattisgarh, one in Maharashtra and one in Karnataka.
The party will lose more seats in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Meghalaya and Assam.
The BJP has the maximum of 82 members and the Congress 46 in the Rajya Sabha, which has a total strength of 245. There are 12 nominated members in the upper house, eight of whom have aligned with the BJP.
Uttar Pradesh has the maximum representation of 31 members in the Council of States, followed by 19 MPs from Maharashtra, 18 members from Tamil Nadu and 16 MPs from West Bengal.
In the North East barring Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya, Congress has no Rajya Sabha member in the rest of the five states. While CPI(M) is the lone member of Rajya Sabha from Tripura, the rest are represented by regional parties besides Congress and BJP.