As many as 73 Members of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha are set to retire between March and November this year, triggering a major round of elections and political realignments across several states.
The Rajya Sabha Secretariat released an official bulletin on Friday detailing the state-wise distribution of the retiring members.
According to the bulletin, Uttar Pradesh will see the highest number of retirements (10 MPs), followed by Maharashtra (7), Tamil Nadu (6), West Bengal and Bihar (5 each).
Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat and Karnataka will each witness four retirements, while Assam, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will have three each.
Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Jharkhand will see two retirements each, and Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand will each have one member retiring.
From Andhra Pradesh, the retiring MPs include YSR Congress party members Alla Ayodhya Rami Reddy, Parimal Nathwani, and Pilli Subhash Chandra Bose, along with TDP member Sana Satish Babu.
Needless to say, all the four Rajya Sabha seats from Andhra Pradesh are expected to go to the ruling coalition this time, as YSRCP doesn’t have enough numbers to retain any of them.
According to TDP sources, out of four seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Jana Sena Party might expect one seat each.
In the earlier instance, too, the TDP was forced to give two Rajya Sabha seats to the BJP – R Krishnaiah and P Venkata Satyanarayana.
Though Jana Sena Party was promised one RS seat in the past, it had to sacrifice the seat in favour of the BJP. This time, the party will have to be accommodated in the Rajya Sabha and in all probability, Pawan Kalyan might recommend his brother Naga Babu’s name for the RS seat.
For the remaining two seats, Naidu might renominate Sana Satish Babu, who happens to be a close friend of Lokesh; besides another senior leader like Yanamala Ramakrishnudu. There is a talk that he might prefer a woman candidate for the RS seat.
In Telangana, BRS member K R Suresh Reddy and Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi are set to retire. Notably, Abhishek Singhvi, a senior Supreme Court advocate, was elected in a by-election following the resignation of Keshava Rao.
With the Congress currently in power in Telangana, both Rajya Sabha seats are widely expected to be won by the Congress party.