Maharashtra, Haryana results may affect BJP’s Rajya Sabha math

A poorer than expected performance in Haryana and Maharashtra will hurt the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha.

A better performance in these two states would have helped the BJP in making up for its potential losses because of its assembly election losses in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan in 2018. Still, Thursday’s results will mean only a marginal decline in the Rajya Sabha seats for the BJP (and BJP-Shiv Sena) for these two states and an equally marginal increase for the Congress.

Maharashtra and Haryana send 19 and five members respectively to the Rajya Sabha. Of the five members from Haryana, the Congress has just one, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has three while Subash Chandra is an independent. To be sure, Chandra was backed by the BJP. In Maharashtra, the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have seven MPs, while the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has 11 MPs.

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Of the five Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana, two each will have elections in 2020 and 2022. Of the 19 Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra, seven will have elections in 2020, while another six will have elections in 2022.The other seats in both Haryana and Maharashtra will only be up for re-election in 2024. Among the 13 Rajya Sabha seats from Maharashtra which will be up for election in 2020 and 2022, the NDA has seven seats while the Congress-NCP has five.

Among the four Rajya Sabha seats which will go to polls in 2020 and 2022 in Haryana, the Congress has just one.

According to information given by PRS legislative research, the number of MLAs required to elect a Rajya Sabha MP in Haryana and Maharashtra is 30 and 36 respectively.

Since two seats will go to polls in Haryana and seven seats will go to polls in Maharashtra simultaneously in 2020, the BJP will not have enough votes of its own to send more than one Rajya Sabha member in Haryana and the BJP-Shiv Sena, with a tally of 163 seats, will be able to send four Rajya Sabha MPs from Maharashtra. The Congress will be able to send one Rajya Sabha MP from Haryana, and the Congress-NCP combine, with a tally of 103, two from Maharashtra in 2020. Things will be more or less similar in the 2022 polls, as the number of seats which will have elections are same in Haryana and one less in Maharashtra.

Given the fact that parties which are not aligned with either the BJP or the Congress have gained a significant number of seats, 18 in Haryana and 20 in Maharashtra, they too will play a significant role in determining who gets to send its members from the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP which has 82 MPs in the upper house currently, against the Congress’s 45, will also suffer some losses in its Rajya Sabha tally from the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where it lost to the Congress in 2018.

The BJP has only 15 MLAs in Chhattisgarh, less than the 30 required to send an MP to the Rajya Sabha. In Rajasthan, it has only 73 MLAs, which can earn it only one Rajya Sabha MP given the minimum number of MLAs required is 50 (according to PRS). In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has 109 MLAs, and the minimum number of MLAs required to send an MP to Rajya Sabha is 58. Currently, the BJP has three Rajya Sabha MPs from Chhattisgarh, eight from Madhya Pradesh and nine from Rajasthan.