With the terms of a few Rajya Sabha members set to end, there will be some new faces and some familiar ones after elections took place over the past month.
The most high-profile election was in Gujarat, where senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel was re-elected on Tuesday after a nail-biting contest. Union Minister Smriti Irani and BJP President Amit Shah were also elected from the state.
In all, Eleven Rajya Sabha members — one from Goa, one from Madhya Pradesh, six from West Bengal and three from Gujarat — were elected..
Gujarat
Smriti Irani (BJP), Ahmed Patel (INC) and Dilip Pandya (BJP) were about to end their terms on August 18. While the BJP pushed for Irani to be re-nomination, they put forward BJP President Amit Shah as the second candidate. Congress defector Balwantsinh Rajput who joined BJP was also nominated for the third seat.
In a tough battle that resulted in plenty of drama, Ahmed Patel beat Balwantsinh Rajput.
West Bengal
Six seats from West Bengal were up for grabs as six MPs will be ending their terms on August 18. Of the six, four seats were occupied by the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) and the other two belonged to Pradip Bhattacharya from the Congress and Sitaram Yechury from Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI-M).
The other four MP's whose terms are about to end are Sukhendu Shekhar Roy, Derek O'Brien, Dola Sen, and Debabrata Bandhyopadhyay.
Derek O' Brien, Sukhendu Shekhar Roy and Dola Sen were re-nominated by the AITC while two other candidates— Manas Bhunia and Santa Chhetri - will be new entrants in the Upper House. The Congress put forward Pradip Bhattacharya for another term.
CPI-M did not file for a renomination for Yechury, and instead attempted to pit Bikash Bhattacharya for the polls. However, the Election Commission found gaps in the submission of Bhattacharya's nomination papers, some of which were submitted after the last day and they rejected his candidature.
Goa
Shantaram Naik, the Indian National Congress sitting member in the Rajya Sabha from Goa ended his term, leaving the sole seat from the state up for grabs.
BJP candidate Vinay Tendulkar defeated Naik to make his way to occupy the only seat from the state. He was previously the state minister for forest and later was declared the state president of the BJP.
Madhya Pradesh
After Union Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) passed away in May, one seat was left vacant in the Rajya Sabha from the state. BJP put forward Sampatiya Uikey to serve the remainder of Dave's term until June 2022.
A tribal leader, Sampatiya Uikey is the district panchayat president in Mandla district, Madhya Pradesh. She had contested the Assembly Elections of 2013 in the state but lost.
