Congress Strength In Rajya Sabha Down To 38 Now

The unanimous election of 10 MPs from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand on Monday in the Rajya Sabha biennial elections has brought down the Congress strength in the House to 38 from 40.

The BJP’s strength in the upper House has now gone up to 92 from 86 and the rise in numbers is likely to make it easy for the ruling party to get legislations passed in the 245-member House with support of allies and friendly parties.

The dipping strength of Congress in the Rajya Sabha is a reflection of downslide it has suffered over the past six years in state polls.

The combined strength of the Congress in both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha is below the hundred-mark. The party has 51 MPs in the lower House of Parliament.

The Congress has lost two successive Lok Sabha elections and at present does not have any MP from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur.

A Congress Rajya Sabha MP, who did not want to be named, said that the party’s strength in the upper House was apparently at a “historic low” but it is expecting “positive news” from assembly polls in Bihar and assembly bypolls in Madhya Pradesh.

Earlier this year, the Congress lost its government in Madhya Pradesh to the BJP. The party had lost coalition government with JD-S in Karnataka last year.

Ten MPs from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand were unanimously elected to the upper House on Monday. Eight of the elected members in Uttar Pradesh belong to BJP while one each is from the Samajwadi Party and the BSP.

The ten Rajya Sabha members from Uttar Pradesh who are retiring on November 25 include three from BJP — Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Arun Singh and Neeraj Shekhar, four from SP – Chandrapal Singh Yadav, Ram Gopal Yadav, Ram Prakash Verma and Javed Ali Khan, two from BSP — Rajaram and Veer Singh, and PL Punia of the Congress.

Congress leader Raj Babbar is retiring as Rajya Sabha member from Uttarakhand.

Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Neeraj Shekhar, Arun Singh and Ram Gopal Yadav have been re-elected to the upper House as BJP members. (ANI)