New Delhi: After winning the Lok Sabha elections comfortably, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s next big challenge will be to steer the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a majority in the Rajya Sabha in the coming years so that crucial legislations can be passed in Parliament. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government could not pass many legislations, including the triple talaq bill, due to the lack of numbers in the Rajya Sabha.
Sources said that the BJP will have to keep on expanding the ambit of the NDA and at the same time strive to win the state Assembly elections in order to get a majority in the Rajya Sabha. It will also have to have a “working relationship” with “fence-sitters” who are neither with BJP nor Congress, like the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), YSR Congress and Biju Janata Dal (BJD), which have six, two and nine members respectively, for clearing key legislations.
Though the BJP is the largest party in the Upper House with 73 members, it is still away from the majority mark. The number of Congress members has gone down to 50. The NDA still needs 17 members to reach the majority mark.
The total strength of the Upper House is 245 and for a party or combination to get a majority, it needs the support of 123 members for passing a Bill. At present, BJP and its allies have 102 members. Though nominated members are not bound by the whip of the ruling party, they generally vote alongside the treasury benches. Taking into consideration this aspect, the BJP/NDA effectively needs 17 more members for a simple majority. As many as 80 MPs are going to retire starting from next month till December 2020. There is unlikely to be a major change in the composition. The BJP/NDA, however, is likely to gain as many as 21 seats as per the present composition of the state Assemblies. But, at the same time, it is also likely to lose as many as seven seats from states like Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and also Bihar because of the changed composition of the state Assemblies there.
The composition will also depend on the outcome of the Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Haryana, which are scheduled later this year. All these three states are ruled by the BJP/NDA. There is going to be a vacancy of 11— Maharashtra (7), Jharkhand (2) and Haryana (2)—during the period (from June 2019 to December 2020).
Some of the prominent members who are retiring from the Rajya Sabha during this period of scrutiny are Manmohan Singh, Sharad Pawar, Digvijaya Singh, Vijay Goel, Prabhat Jha, Raj Babbar, Hardeep Puri and Ram Gopal Yadav.
Sources said the BJP will not only have to retain power in all the states it now rules, but also win new states in order to increase its numbers in the Upper House. At the same time, it will have to have a “working relationship” with fence-sitters.