Rajya Sabha Elections 2018 Live Updates: Voting will take place for 25 vacant seats across six states.
Election of members for 58 Rajya Sabha seats and a bye-election seat is taking place across 16 states today. Out of 58 Rajya Sabha seats, polling is being held for 25 vacant seats as 33 candidates from 10 states have been elected unopposed. The voting started at 9 am and will continue till 4 pm. Counting of votes for the election will begin from 5 pm and results are expected to be announced by today evening.
The polling is taking place in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana. The BJP is expected to gain about a dozen seats in the Upper House and consolidate its position as the largest party. However, it is still far from a majority in the 245-member house.
Elected representatives of state legislatures will elect Rajya Sabha members by a process of indirect voting in what is called proportional representation with a single transferable vote.
The Rajya Sabha elections are being held as 58 members will retire next month. Here’s the list of states and the number of seats which will be filled after today’s election:
Andhra Pradesh (3), Bihar (6), Chhattisgarh (1), Gujarat (4), Haryana (1), Himachal Pradesh (1), Karnataka (4), Madhya Pradesh (5), Maharashtra (6), Telangana (3), Uttar Pradesh (10), Uttarakhand (1), West Bengal (5), Odisha (3), Rajasthan (3) and Jharkhand (2).
Besides the Rajya Sabha elections, a bypoll will also be held for one seat in Kerala where MP Veerendra Kumar, the Left-backed candidate of Sharad Yadav faction of the JD(U), is pitted against Babu Prasad of the Congress.
Follow our Rajya Sabha Elections 2018 Live Updates here:
"All the nine candidates of BJP will win. SP insulted their workers and people will answer them for choosing a candidate that entertains the society rather than one who serves the society," ANI quotes Nitin Agrawal son of Naresh Agrawal as saying.
The number of votes needed to win the one Rajya Sabha seat in the state is 71 and the CPM-led alliance, with 90 MLAs in the state assembly, has more than enough numbers.
In West Bengal, six candidates are in the fray for five seats. Ruling TMC has fielded four candidates — Nadimul Haq, Subhashish Chakraborty, Abir Biswas and Santunu Sen. Seeking unity amongst the opposition parties ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has extended her support to Abhishek Manu Singhvi. Singhvi is the lone nominee from the Congress regime. The sixth candidate, who would be in the fray, is Rabin Deb from the CPM.
A candidate would require at least 50 votes to win. The TMC has 213 votes, Congress has 42 votes and the CPM has 26. READ MORE
"BJP will win all the nine Rajya Sabha seats where we have fielded our candidates. Nine more BJP candidates will make entry to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh this time," Deputy state Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya tells ANI.
Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav says there will be no cross-voting in the Rajya Sabha elections being held in Uttar Pradesh, but BJP MLAs will cross-vote in their favour.
For the Uttar Pradesh Rajya Sabha elections, 11 candidates are in the fray for the 10 seats on offer from the state. The BJP has fielded nine candidates, including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and it has the numbers to get at least eight seats and the other two are expected to go to the SP and the BSP (which is counting on the support of other parties). However, senior BJP leaders are of the opinion that the ninth seat will be a contest.The BJP (311) and its allies (13) have 324 MLAs in the 403-member Uttar Pradesh Assembly. To secure a win in this Rajya Sabha election, a UP candidate needs to win 37 first preference votes. Going by that, BJP can easily win eight of the 10 seats and will be left with 28 surplus votes. READ MORE
Altogether six candidates, including Congress nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi, are in the fray for the five Rajya Sabha seats from the state.
The BJP had yesterday announced that it would stay away from Rajya Sabha polls being held to fill three vacancies from Telangana. A decision to the effect was taken as per the directives of the party's central leadership, state BJP president K Laxman said in a statement.
Election is being held to fill three vacancies and four candidates, three belonging to TRS and one Congress nominee, are in the fray.
PTI
Voting for Rajya Sabha elections in six states- Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, has begun.
The single vote is transferable from one nominee to another and that takes place in two contingencies where there would otherwise be a wastage of votes. They are:-when a candidate obtains more than what is required for his success and therefore has an unnecessary surplus; and-when a candidate polls so few votes that he has absolutely no chance and therefore the votes nominating him are liable to be wasted.
The representatives of the states and of UTs in Rajya Sabha are elected by the method of indirect election. The representatives of each state and two UTs are elected by the elected members of the legislative assembly of that state and by the members of the Electoral College for that union territory, as the case may be, in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote.
33 candidates from 10 states were declared elected unopposed on March 15. Seven union ministers including Ravi Shankar Prasad and Prakash Javadekar were among them.
Welcome to our live blog for the coverage of the Rajya Sabha elections 2018 being held to elect members from 16 states. The voting will take place from 9 am to 4 pm and counting of ballots will start at 5 pm. Results are also likely to be announced by today evening.