New Delhi | Elections to 12 Rajya Sabha seats across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will be held on October 16, the Election Commission announced on Tuesday.
The elections will cover 10 seats from Uttar Pradesh and one from Uttarakhand, where the terms of the sitting members end on November 25, along with a bypoll to one seat from West Bengal.
The notification will be issued on September 29, nominations can be filed until October 6 and votes will be counted on October 16, the poll panel said.
Among the members retiring from Uttar Pradesh are BJP leaders Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Neeraj Shekhar, Brijlal, B L Verma, Seema Dwivedi and Hardeep Singh Puri, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav and the BSP's Ramji Gautam.
The seat held by former Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma has also been vacant since September 11, when his resignation took effect following his appointment as lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
In Uttarakhand, BJP member Naresh Bansal's term is coming to an end.
Eight of the 10 outgoing Uttar Pradesh seats were held by the BJP, while the Samajwadi Party and the BSP held one each. The Rajya Sabha elections come ahead of the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls due next year.
Based on the present assembly arithmetic, the BJP-led alliance is expected to win eight seats, while the Samajwadi Party is projected to secure two.
The outcome could leave the BSP without representation in the Rajya Sabha as it does not have the numbers to retain Gautam's seat on its own.
The BSP has no MLA in Uttar Pradesh following the death of its lone legislator, Uma Shankar Singh, in August. Even in 2020, it lacked the numbers to elect a Rajya Sabha member on its own. But the BJP fielded only eight candidates for the 10 seats, leaving room for the BSP's Ramji Gautam.
He was elected unopposed after the nomination of a Samajwadi Party-backed Independent was rejected, prompting the SP to allege a BJP-BSP understanding.
The BJP is also comfortably placed to retain the Uttarakhand seat.
The West Bengal bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of Rukmini Mallik, popularly known as actor Koel Mallick, on July 16. The winner will serve the remainder of the term until April 2, 2032.
With a clear majority in the West Bengal Assembly, the ruling BJP is set to wrest the seat from the Trinamool Congress.
