NDA Crosses Majority Mark in Rajya Sabha As 12 Members Elected Unopposed

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has crossed the majority mark in the Rajya Sabha after twelve candidates including one from the opposition Congress were elected unopposed ahead of the by-elections scheduled for the upper house on September 3.

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The majority-mark in the 245-member Rajya Sabha is 122. However, at present the House has 237 members with four vacancies from Jammu and Kashmir, where legislative assembly elections are scheduled to be held next month, and four nominated members.

Prior to the bypolls, the NDA had a total of 110 MPs including six nominated members who tend to support the government. But now with 11 members elected unopposed, the NDA has 121 members, in the 237-member house where the majority is 119.

The candidates who were elected unopposed on Tuesday (August 27) include union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu, from Rajasthan and George Kurian from Madhya Pradesh. The other BJP candidates who were elected unopposed include former Congress leader Kiran Choudhry (Haryana), former BJD leader Mamata Mohanta (Odisha), Manan Kumar Mishra (Bihar), Dhairyasheel Patil (Maharashtra) and Rajeev Bhattacharjee (Tripura).

In addition, NDA ally and former union minister Upendra Kushwaha of the Rashtriya Lok Morcha was also elected unopposed from Bihar,  while the BJP’s ally in Maharashtra, the Nationalist Congress Party’s Nitin Patil was elected unopposed from the state.

Earlier on Monday (August 26) Mission Ranjan Dass and Rameshwar Teli were both elected unopposed from Assam.

Also on Tuesday (August 27), the lone opposition candidate, Congress’ Abhishek Manu Singhvi was elected unopposed from Telangana.

The twelve vacancies arose after ten members of the Rajya Sabha were elected as Lok Sabha MPs in the 2024 elections. These include BJP’s Piyush Goyal, Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Vivek Thakur, Udayanraje Bhosle, Biplab Kumar Deb, Jyotiraditya Scindia, RJD’s Misa Bharti and Congress’ Deepender Singh Hooda and K.C. Venugopal.

Two seats also fell vacant from Odisha and Telangana. While Mohanta resigned from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and joined the BJP, K. Keshava Rao resigned from the BRS and joined the Congress, paving the way for Singhvi.

Once the newly elected members take oath, the BJP will have a total of 96 members in the House.

The Congress on the other hand will have a total of 27 members in the Rajya Sabha. The other major opposition parties include the TMC with 13 members, YSRCP (11), Aam Aadmi Party and DMK with 10 each, BJD eight and RJD 5.

The YSRCP and the BJD are fence sitters now, despite supporting the BJP in legislations in the previous two Modi governments.

The other non-aligned parties include AIADMK (4) and BRS (4) but they can support the government in legislations.

Just in July, the NDA had fallen short of a majority when the then-226 member Rajya Sabha had 101 members from the NDA with 19 vacancies in the house.