House of Elders gets younger as 43 first-timers enter Rajya Sabha

NEW DELHI: With 43 first-time MPs set to enter Rajya Sabha after Friday’s biennial elections, the House of Elders is likely to get younger. But the House will also end up losing about 63 terms worth of collective experience.
This is because 61 members who are due to retire from the Upper House in June have a total collective experience of 95 terms. In contrast, the new incumbents have a cumulative experience of 32 terms, resulting in a sharp decline in collective experience.
Against the 61 vacancies created by retiring members, while 42 were filled by MPs who were elected unopposed, elections to the remaining 19 vacancies were held on Friday.
The drop in the total experience in respect of four vacancies in Andhra Pradesh is six terms, followed by five terms in respect of six vacancies in Tamil Nadu, four terms in case of four vacancies in Gujarat and four terms in Odisha with all the four new members being first-timers.
The prominent first-timers entering the Upper House include BJP’s Jyotiraditya Scindia, Congress’ Mallikarjun Kharge and KC Venugopal, former Lok Sabha deputy speaker M Thambidurai and former Speaker of the composite Andhra Pradesh assembly KR Suresh Reddy.
Six members entering Rajya Sabha have been members of the Upper House earlier and include GK Vasan, Dinesh Trivedi and Nabam Rabia (it will be third term for them) and former PM Deve Gowda, Shibu Soren (second term).
State-wise, the four members who retired from Karnataka had a total experience of nine terms in Rajya Sabha while the new incumbents have a total experience of only one term in the election of Deve Gowda with the other three being first-timers.
In the case of Maharashtra, while seven members with a collective experience of 10 terms retired, the new incumbents account for an experience of only two terms with the re-election of Sharad Pawar and Ramdas Athawale.