This Is How Rajya Sabha Composition Will Evolve Over 2016

In a recent article published in Economic Times, a report by Morgan Stanley was quoted to say how by July 2016, BJP may get the required strength in Rajya Sabha to pass the GST bill, and by corollary other bills too which are pending upper house approval for the last nine months or so.

We had touched upon this subject in our earlier analysis of Congress party fortunes in 2016. Congress had 68 members in October in the upper house with 12 nominated members presumably supporting as well. Since then, the Rajya Sabha composition has started evolving in favor of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) starting last October.

In October, Congress lost the Puducherry seat to AIADMK, with the ruling Congress (NR) faction which usually supports NDA, working alongside AIADMK for the election. This brought down the Congress member count from 68 to 67. In November, two nominated members HK Dua and Ashok S Ganguly completed their terms, bringing down the nominated members from 12 to 10. No new nominations have happened as of now and these seats will presumably get filled later in March when other nominated members retire. So Congress support as of now stands at 77 seats.

The Election Commission has announced the schedule for polls on 13 seats to be held on 21 March. Additionally, five nominated members – Mani Shankar Aiyar, Bhalchandra Mungekar, Javed Akhtar, B Jayashree, and Mrinal Miri will retire from their term on 21 March. Thus, there will be 20 seats in play this month – 13 via elections and seven via nominations. While the polls will actually benefit Congress, given the quirkiness of out of step Assembly and Rajya Sabha cycles in some states, overall NDA will get a leg up. Currently, NDA has 60 MPs in the upper house.

21 March Seat Change Position

Assam has two seats, which will go for Rajya Sabha polls just ahead of the Assembly election. 64 first choice votes are required to wrest a seat from Congress in this poll, but the recently allied parties – Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), Bodoland People’s Front (BDF), and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) will only have 26 votes between them. So Congress will retain both seats or may even give one to All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) as a goodwill gesture ahead of a potential election alliance.

Himachal Pradesh has a sitting BJP MP and Congress will gain this seat from the BJP with only one seat in play. However, there is a possibility that Congress uses this sure seat to get its senior leader Anand Sharma back to the upper house. He is scheduled to retire from his Rajasthan seat in May, and this is the safest passage from him. We will know later this week as the last date to file nominations for 21 March elections is 11 March. For now, we should assume a net gain for Congress.

Kerala will have three seats going to poll in an Assam type situation. Currently CPM holds two of these while Congress holds one. With 48 first choice votes required for each seat, both Congress and the Left Front – a CPM candidate – will win one seat comfortably. The third seat will go to Congress as neither faction will have the full quota for the first choice votes. So Congress will gain one seat from CPM.

Nagaland has one seat going in the polls which will be retained by Naga People’s Front (NPF). The seat fell vacant due to the death of sitting MP last year. Tripura is also polling this month for one seat with CPM being the incumbent. CPM will retain this seat.

Punjab has five seats in the polls from two different biennial election cycles. One cycle has 3 seats, one each for BJP (Avinash Rai Khanna), Congress (Ashwani Kumar), and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) (Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa). The other cycle has two seats, one each held by Congress (MS Gill) and SAD (Naresh Gujral). The three seat polling cycle will need 40 first choice votes to win a seat, while the two seat cycle will need 59 first choice votes. Congress has a MLA count in mid 40s, and most likely will end up retaining only one seat in the three seat cycle. SAD should win two comfortably and BJP one. The fifth seat from the two seat cycle will go to NDA as a net gain and will most likely be a gain for SAD.

Summary of March polling cycle is given below, where NDA will gain seven seats, six at the expense of Congress and one at the expense of CPM (net position). On 21 March, Congress supporting strength will go down to 71, while NDA numbers will go up to 67.

June Polling Cycle

The next round of Rajya Sabha polls will take place sometime in June 2016. 57 seats will go to polls across 15 states. The schedule for this poll will be announced by the Election Commission sometime in May.

The current seat position for these 15 states is as follows. (Click to enlarge)

We assume that All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) will retain Tamil Nadu. The June numbers will stack up most likely as below. (Click to enlarge)

The net position change will likely be as follows. (Click to enlarge)

BJP will gain three seats at the expense of Congress. The NDA member count will increase to 70, while Congress support count will reduce to 68. Additionally, the net gains in this cycle will accrue to regional parties – Samajwadi Party (SP), Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and Yuvajana, Shramika, Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) – which generally tend to be amenable towards national impact legislation.

Another interesting feature of the June cycle will be that several Congress big guns will be up for reelection. These include Jairam Ramesh (AP), Vijaylakshmi Sadho (MP), Oscar Fernandes (Karnataka), Mohsina Kidwai (Chhatisgarh), Anand Sharma (Rajasthan), Vijay Darda (Maharashtra), Satish Sharma (UP), and Ambika Soni (Punjab). Many of them will find it difficult to win from their current states given the electoral math. So, Congress will have an additional headache of not nominating some sitting MPs to ensure all big names get back to the upper house. This may lead to discontent within the party.

The Big Picture

Post June 2016, the partywise distribution of Rajya Sabha seats will be as follows:

With BJP adding new allies like PDP and BDF, the overall NDA tally will see some improvement too on key votes.

The alliance wise position will stack up as follows:

Of the others with 76 seats, the government can likely persuade SP (18), AIADMK (13), Trinamool (12), BJD (7), TRS (3), and YSRCP (1) to vote in favor of key legislative bills, giving it 54 additional votes. This will take the potential favorable votes to 128, well over the half-way mark.

For GST passage, a constitutional amendment, the government can only afford to have 81 No votes if it aims to get a two-third vote. So it will have to get 12 votes from the UPA bucket assuming everyone else including the Left parties vote in favor of the bill. Nominated members (3), NCP (4), DMK (4) and SDF (1) should give that option to the government, though of course this is cutting it very close.

As we go into 2017, these numbers will continue to improve decisively for the NDA. All in all, this is indeed good news for the government – if only the Rajya Sabha works!