Among the ‘big’ BJP names whose political careers are at stake are Suvendu Adhikari, Mukul Roy and Swapan Dasgupta.
New Delhi: Prominent BJP faces who “lose out” in the ongoing Assembly elections, including in West Bengal, will have to wait at least a year to seek a possible rehabilitation in the Rajya Sabha.
Among the “big” names from the BJP whose political careers are at stake in these elections are Suvendu Adhikari who is contesting from Nandigram, Mukul Roy who is contesting from Krishna Nagar North and Swapan Dasgupta who is contesting from Tarakeshwar after resigning from his nominated seat in the Rajya Sabha. After the results of the Assembly elections going on in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are announced on 2 May, only four Rajya Sabha seats will be up for grabs till April 2022.
On 21 April 2021, the tenure of three Rajya Sabha members from Kerala, including former Union minister V, Ravi, will end. Later in October, the tenure of the lone Rajya Sabha from Puducherry will come to an end.
Post October, there is no vacancy in Rajya Sabha till April 2022, when 18 members, which include five nominated MPs, will be retiring. The nominated members who will be retiring in April 2022 include Roopa Ganguly, economist Narendra Jadhav, Subramaniam Swamy, Mary Kom and Suresh Gopi. The other notable names whose tenure will be ending in April include Congressman A.K. Antony and Anand Sharma, who is a prominent member of the “G-23” Congress leaders’ group which has spoken out against the present functioning style within the Congress under Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
In April 2022, following the end of the tenure of these MPs, Punjab, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura will be in the position to send new MPs to the Rajya Sabha.
In May 2022, the tenure of another nominated MP, Sambhaji Chhatrapati, will end. However, in June 2022, 21 existing members will relinquish their post. The members whose tenure will be coming to end include Vivek Tankha (another member of “G-23”) and M.J. Akbar who got nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh.
Similarly, senior Congress man Jai Ram Ramesh, who is an MP from Karnataka, too, will be bidding farewell to the Upper House. In all, 4 members from Andhra Pradesh, 2 from Telangana, 4 from Karnataka, 6 from Tamil Nadu, 2 from Chhattisgarh and 3 from Madhya Pradesh will retire from the Rajya Sabha.
In July 2022, tenure of 33 members will come to an end including 11 members from Uttar Pradesh, 1 from Uttarakhand, 3 from Odisha, 4 from Rajasthan, 2 from Punjab, 6 from Maharashtra, 4 from Bihar and 2 from Jharkhand. The July retirement and the subsequent nomination of new members to replace them will give a lot of insight into the internal power equations in the BJP, Congress, Shiv Sena, NCP and BSP as the tenures of many heavyweights such as P. Chidambaram, Om Prakash Mathur, Satish Chandra Mishra, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Kapil Sibal, Praful Patel, Sanjay Raut, Ambica Soni and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi from across these parties will end. Post July, only two vacancies will arise in the entire year, when the tenure of Dushyant Gautam and Subhash Chandra will end in August.