Rajya Sabha polls: Voting for 13 seats across six states today

New Delhi, Mar 31: The elections to 13 Rajya Sabha seats across six states will be held today. These seats include the maximum five in Punjab followed by three in Kerala, two in Assam and one each in Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura.

The voting and counting of votes will be taken up today itself.

With the BJP dominating the recently concluded Assembly polls in five states, it eyes victory in at least five seats. The saffron party currently has a strength of 97 in the 245-member Rajya Sabha.

How voting is done in Rajya Sabha elections?

A third of Rajya Sabha Members from each state retire every two years after serving for a tenure of six years. Only elected members of the state assemblies vote in a Rajya Sabha election. They mark their preference for the candidates as 1, 2 3... in order of their first, second or third choice. In all the states, the ruling party will have an edge over the opposition parties.

How are Rajya Sabha members elected?

Rajya Sabha MPs are elected by the electoral college of the elected members of the State Assembly with a system of proportional representation by a single transferable vote.

Some of the members retiring in April include deputy leader of the Congress Anand Sharma, A K Antony, Subramanian Swamy, M C Mary Kom and Swapan Dasgupta while the terms of Nirmala Sitharaman, Suresh Prabhu, M J Akbar, Jairam Ramesh, Vivek Tankha, V Vijayasai Reddy will end in June.

Among the members retiring in July are Piyush Goyal, Muktar Abbas Naqvi, P Chidambaram, Ambika Soni, Kapil Sibal, Satish Chandra Misra, Sanjay Raut, Praful Patel and K J Alphons.

While some union ministers and BJP leaders will be renominated by the ruling party, there is no clarity on some renomination of the Congress members, some of whom are of the G-23 which has been critical of the party leadership.