The Rajya Sabha berths of several Union ministers, BJP president J.P. Nadda and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are among 56 to which elections will be held on February 27.
The Election Commission of India (EC) on Monday declared the last major set of polls before the Lok Sabha contest, with Upper House seats from 15 states up for grabs. Given its influence in most of these states, the BJP is expected to retain its grip on the Upper House.
Among the prominent MPs whose seats are up for election are Union ministers Mansukh L. Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Samajwadi Party member Jaya Bachchan and the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Manoj Jha, apart from Nadda and Manmohan.
In Bengal, the seats of five MPs — Trinamul’s Abir Ranjan Biswas, Subhasish Chakraborty, Mohammed Nadimul Haque and Santanu Sen and the Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi — will go to the polls. Singhvi was elected with Trinamul support in 2018.
The 15 states are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bengal, Odisha and Rajasthan.
