How will assembly poll results affect Rajya Sabha? AAP to gain maximum, BJP to lose lone seat from Punjab

Despite a spectacular performance in recently concluded assembly polls for five states, the BJP will lose its lone Rajya Sabha seat from Punjab, experts say.

Reason? The BJP, which forged alliance with Captain Amarinder Singh's party could bag only two seats.

On the contrary, Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party’s tally will increase significantly. Currently, BJP has one seat from the state while AAP has zero in the upper house from the state.

However, bolstered by the landslide victory, AAP is poised to win six out of seven seats from Punjab which will go to poll in two phases.

First phase of election for five Rajya Sabha seats from Punjab will be completed in March while remaining seats will go to poll in the second phase in July.

The Election Commission has recently announced that polls to 13 Rajya Sabha seats in six States would be held on March 31.

AAP, which has won 92 seats in the 117-member Punjab assembly, has only three MPs in the upper house from Delhi.

Out of these five Rajya Sabha seats which will go to poll, currently two are with the Congress (Partap Singh Bajwa and Shamsher Singh Dullo), two with the Shiromani Akali Dal (Sukhdev Singh and Naresh Gujral) and one with the BJP (Shwait Malik).

Punjab watchers say, AAP will easily secure victory for four candidates with 92 MLAs. It can manage more seats, in case cross voting takes place, said a Punjab watcher.

The party has begun inter-party consultations for choosing the candidates. According to AAP insiders, the immediate task before the party is to finalise the candidates as the process for filing the nomination has begun already.

As far as the Congress is concerned, its tally will go down in the upper house to 31 by March end. The grand old party could lose two more seats in Assam and another one in Himachal Pradesh in coming polls.

Congress MP Anand Sharma is retiring from the upper house.

Congress could even lose its status as the lead opposition party in the Rajya Sabha, said a Delhi watcher.

Apart from Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, three seats from Kerala would be vacated due to the retirement of AK Antony, MV Shreyams Kumar and Somaprasad K.

Similarly, one seat each in Nagaland and Tripura would be vacated upon retirement of KG Kenye and Jharna Das Baidya respectively.

According to the Election Commission schedule, polling would be held from 9 am to 4 pm and the counting of votes would begin at 5 pm on March 31.

Analysts believe, despite spectacular performance in assembly polls, BJP led NDA will still be short of a majority in the upper house in the coming year.

“The composition of the Rajya Sabha is not going to change much…Poll results will not have any decisive bearing on it. It means that the BJP will have to depend heavily on like minded parties such as BJD, YSRCP and AIADMK to get crucial bills passed in the upper house,” said a watcher.