The Election Commission on Friday announced that elections for three Rajya Sabha seats from Delhi besides one seat each from Sikkim and Uttar Pradesh would be held on January 16. The notification for the polls will be issued on December 29 and the last date of making nominations is January 5, 2018. The nominations would be scrutinised the next day and the candidates can withdraw their names by January 8. The polling will be held on January 16 between 9 am to 4 pm, and the counting of votes will be done the same day, the EC said.
The term of the three members from Delhi — Karan Singh, Janardan Dwivedi and Parvez Hashmi (all from Congress) — are due to end on January 27, 2018. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), having a majority in the Delhi Assembly, holds sway over the three seats. However, the party has not decided its candidates.
Although there are a few leaders within the party who can lay claim to a Rajya Sabha berth, with Ashutosh, Sanjay Singh and Kumar Vishwas being the frontrunners. The party had reportedly also approached former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan but he declined the offer. The party will have to zero in on the candidates by the end of its month.
The Sikkim seat would fall vacant as Hishey Lachungpa (from Sikim Democratic Front ) is due to retire on February 23 next year, while a seat from Uttar Pradesh fell vacant after Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar resigned from the Narendra Modi Government and the Upper House in September on returning to Goa as Chief Minister. Parrikar's term in the upper house was to end on November 25, 2020.
The EC said the three Delhi seats would be filled by holding three separate elections as each of these vacancies fell under three different cycles which were determined at the time of the initial constitution of the Rajya Sabha in 1952.
It said that the Delhi High Court in 1994 dismissed a petition filed against holding separate elections for the three seats. It said the Delhi seats will be filled "by holding three separate biennial elections to fill one seat each".