With over 60 seats having gone for the Rajya Sabha polls, in filling vacancies declared since March, the BJP is nowhere near a majority in the Upper House of Parliament. In the present round of polling the BJP gained the upper hand, its strength going up to 86 against a diminishing strength for the Congress, at 41 in the 242-member Rajya Sabha. The NDA strength rose to nearly 100. Still, there is little likelihood of the BJP-NDA gaining the upper hand in the House in the near future, belying expectations till recently, that the BJP-NDA will achieve its aim on this soon after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
With the Shiv Sena and the Telugu Desam out of the NDA, the ruling alliance’s assembly-level support for the RS polls reduced. Besides, the Congress managed to outwit the BJP in quite a few states. This made the BJP aspiration to win a majority in the RS a tough call; and this will reflect on the government’s performance. The NDA managed to see through legislations in the Upper House via support from some regional parties, while the Congress and the Trinamool Congress put up stiff resistance. That resistance saw key legislations like the GST bill kept on the back burner for years after the Modi government took power in 2014. This Bill was ultimately passed towards the end of Modi’s first term by turning the legislation into a finance bill, not requiring RS nod.
Smooth functioning for a government is not possible unless it has majority support in both Houses of Parliament. This will be unlikely, given the present state of affairs, and even in the future too. The equations in state assemblies would not allow the BJP-NDA to outwit the Opposition in the upper house. This scenario is only likely to turn worse as the BJP as a political entity is failing to muster support in state assembly polls, one after another, and the Congress or the regional parties are gaining ground in some states. This will further affect the RS strength for the NDA as a whole in the next four years of the Modi government. After Amit Shah left as BJP chief, the organisational-level functioning of the BJP has suffered; it has lost the cutting edge mobilizing skills that Shah was adept at.
Chances are also that the present lockdown, the migrant labour crisis, the Chinese aggression etc., might further work against the BJP in future polls. This might also hurt the BJP and its allies in future RS polls.
