Elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats spread across 15 states will take place on June 10, an Election Commission official has said. These elections will be crucial in terms of the Presidential elections due in July. Seven seats of nominated MPs are also vacant.
The maximum number of seats, 11, lies in Uttar Pradesh. It is followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu -- six seats are up for election in each state.
Elections will also be held on five seats from Bihar, four each from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, three each from Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each from Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Telangana and one seat from Uttarakhand.
Of the 57 seats, the BJP has 23 seats and eight are held by the Congress. The rest are divided between the BJP and other parties. After this phase, the strength of MK Stalin-led DMK and Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party are set to increase.
The terms of several Union ministers -- including Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi -- are set to end and they will be up for re-election.
The tenure of many Congress veterans, like P Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Jairam Ramesh and Ambika Soni are also set to end.
Last month, the BJP managed to cross the 100 mark in the upper house of parliament following the biennial elections, becoming the first party to do so since 1990.
The party won three more seats -- one each from Assam, Tripura and Nagaland -- ending up with 101 MPs in the Upper House.
The Rajya Sabha has 245 members, the majority mark stands at 123.
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