The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) strength in the Rajya Sabha has fallen after four nominated members completed their terms on July 13. The four Rajya Sabha members are Rakesh Sinha, Ram Shakal, Sonal Mansingh, and Mahesh Jethmalani.
These four were chosen – as non-aligned members – by President Droupadi Murmu on the advice of the BJP and later allied with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government formally.
BJP has 86 members
With the retirement, the BJP’s strength in the Upper House comes down to 86. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 101 members.
The present strength of the Rajya Sabha is 225. The majority mark in Rajya Sabha is 113. The Congress-led INDIA bloc has 87 members. Of these the Congress has 26, Trinamool Congress has 13, and the Aam Aadmi Party and the DMK have 10 members each in the Upper House.
With 86 members in Rajya Sabha, the government relies on non-NDA parties including its former ally AIADMK of and Jagan Mohan Reddy’s YSR Congress Party – to pass bills. AIADMK has four MPs while YSRCP has 11 members. Both parties have in the past supported the ruling party.
The non-NDA parties
Another party in the Upper House is Naveen Patnaik’s BJD which has 9 MPs in Rajya Sabha. BJD used to extend support to BJP but Naveen Patnaik has now said he will not support the BJP after its defeat by the saffron party in recent Odisha assembly polls.
Under these circumstances, another non-aligned party, BRS, which has four MPs, and independents, are also key players. There are 12 nominated members in the Rajya Sabha. Although non-aligned, but they usually support the ruling party.
The numbers in Rajya Sabha will change after the assembly elections scheduled in states like Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand scheduled later this year.
Rajya Sabha MPs are elected by MLAs through the proportional representation process with thesingle transferable vote(STV) system. Each MLA’s vote is counted only once.
