Maharashtra, Haryana results may affect BJP’s Rajya Sabha calculation

A poorer than expected performance
in Haryana and Maharashtra will hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya
Sabha.

A better performance in these two
states would have helped the BJP in making up for its potential losses because
of its assembly election losses in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan
in 2018.

Still, Thursday’s results will
mean only a marginal decline in the Rajya Sabha seats for the BJP (and BJP-Shiv
Sena) for these two states and an equally marginal increase for the Congress.

Maharashtra and Haryana send 19
and five members respectively to the Rajya Sabha. Of the five members from
Haryana, the Congress has just one, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has three
while Subash Chandra is an independent. To be sure, Chandra was backed by the
BJP. In Maharashtra, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have
seven MPs, while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 11 MPs.

Of the five Rajya Sabha seats from
Haryana, two each will have elections in 2020 and 2022. Of the 19 Rajya Sabha
seats from Maharashtra, seven will have elections in 2020, while another six
will have elections in 2022.The other seats in both Haryana and Maharashtra
will only be up for re-election in 2024. Among the 13 Rajya Sabha seats from
Maharashtra which will be up for election in 2020 and 2022, the NDA has seven
seats while the Congress-NCP has five.

Among the four Rajya Sabha seats
which will go to polls in 2020 and 2022 in Haryana, the Congress has just one.

According to information given by
PRS legislative research, the number of MLAs required to elect a Rajya Sabha MP
in Haryana and Maharashtra is 30 and 36 respectively.

Since two seats will go to polls
in Haryana and seven seats will go to polls in Maharashtra simultaneously in
2020, the BJP will not have enough votes of its own to send more than one Rajya
Sabha member in Haryana and the BJP-Shiv Sena, with a tally of 163 seats, will
be able to send four Rajya Sabha MPs from Maharashtra.

The Congress will be able to send
one Rajya Sabha MP from Haryana, and the Congress-NCP combine, with a tally of
103, two from Maharashtra in 2020.

Things will be more or less
similar in the 2022 polls, as the number of seats which will have elections are
same in Haryana and one less in Maharashtra.

Given the fact that parties which
are not aligned with either the BJP or the Congress have gained a significant
number of seats, 18 in Haryana and 20 in Maharashtra, they too will play a
significant role in determining who gets to send its members from the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP which has 82 MPs in the
upper house currently, against the Congress’s 45, will also suffer some losses
in its Rajya Sabha tally from the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and
Rajasthan, where it lost to the Congress in 2018.

The BJP has only 15 MLAs in
Chhattisgarh, less than the 30 required to send an MP to the Rajya Sabha.

In Rajasthan, it has only 73 MLAs,
which can earn it only one Rajya Sabha MP given the minimum number of MLAs
required is 50 (according to PRS). In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has 109 MLAs, and
the minimum number of MLAs required to send an MP to Rajya Sabha is 58.
Currently, the BJP has three Rajya Sabha MPs from Chhattisgarh, eight from
Madhya Pradesh and nine from Rajasthan.