The Election Commission of India on Tuesday announced the schedule for biennial elections to Rajya Sabha for the seats that are going to fall vacant in April.
In all, elections are going to be held for 55 Rajya Sabha seats in 17 seats. From Andhra Pradesh, four seats are going to fall vacant and in Telangana, elections will be held for two seats.
The notification for the Rajya Sabha elections will be issued on March 6. The last date for filing of nominations is March 13.
Generally, the chances of conducting polling for the RS seats are less, as the number of MLAs for each party will decide the number of RS seats it can get.
If a party doesn’t have sufficient numbers, it won’t field its candidate. However, if the gap between the strengths of the ruling party and the opposition party in any assembly is very less, both the sides might field extra candidates to deny the rivals of chances of winning.
So, if there are more contestants than the number of seats, polling would be held on March 26 and the counting will be held on the same day and the results would be announced immediately.
From Andhra Pradesh, four Rajya Sabha candidates – M A Khan, T Subbarami Reddy, K Kesava Rao and Thota Sita Ramalakshmi, are going to retire; and from Telangana, two members – K V P Ramachander Rao and Garikapati Mohan Rao will be completing their term.
It will be smooth sailing for YSR Congress party and Telangana Rashtra Samithi in the Rajya Sabha elections in AP and Telangana respectively.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party will not have any chance of fielding its candidates in place of outgoing RS candidate Sita Ramalakshmi; and so, all the four seats will go to YSR Congress party which had won huge mandate in the assembly elections with 151 MLAs.
In Telangana, too, the TRS will grab both the RS seats, as the Congress or the BJP or the TDP have no strength in the assembly to win.
So, the chances of polling in both the states are totally nil!