The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has become the first party since 1990 to achieve the feat of having 100 members in the Rajya Sabha – the Upper House of Parliament -- after the saffron party won one seat each in the northeastern states of Assam, Tripura, and Nagaland in the elections held on March 31.
Biennial elections for 13 Rajya Sabha seats were recently held across six states, namely, Assam, Tripura, Nagaland, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Kerala. The BJP lost its only seat from Punjab but gained three new ones from the northeastern states and Himachal Pradesh, where all the five outgoing Rajya Sabha members were from opposition parties.
In Punjab, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) – the ruling party in the state -- won all the five seats that went to the polls.
Though the Rajya Sabha website has not yet notified the new tally, the BJP is set to reach the 100-seat mark with the three seats it gained in the latest round of polls.
Although this makes the BJP’s tally way short of majority in the 245-member House, the outcome does highlight the party’s steady rise in popularity since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over the reins and led it to victory in the 2014 polls. The party’s strength in Rajya Sabha was 55 in 2014 and has only risen since.
The last time a party had achieved the 100-seat mark in the Upper House was in 1990 when the then ruling party Congress had 108 members in the Rajya Sabha. Then on, its steady decline started, with the numbers first falling to 99 in the 1990 biennial polls.
However, the saffron party's achievement may not hold out for long as 52 more seats are set to go to the polls soon, where it may suffer reverses in states such as Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand.
(With PTI inputs)
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