Last month, the Election Commission of India (ECI) held polls to fill 56 Rajya Sabha seats from 14 states. Without the vibrancy of a direct election, Rajya Sabha polls are usually lacklustre affairs. There are no big political rallies or a large electorate that candidates need to reach out to. The voters in these elections are Members of State Legislative Assemblies (MLAs). More often than not, there is no contest and MLAs don’t even have to cast their vote to elect a Rajya Sabha member. In the latest round of elections, for instance, there was no contest on 41 seats.
For the 15 seats that did go to polls, the candidates campaigned over lunch, dinners and intimate one-on-one interactions. And like every two years, Rajya Sabha elections make news when a political personality/ party loses what numerically appears to be a winnable election. This time, Congress candidate in Himachal Pradesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Alok Ranjan, the Samajwadi Party candidate who was the former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, lost the polls. The loss was due to cross-voting by the respective party MLAs.
Rajya Sabha is a permanent House and its members have a six-year term. A third of its members retire every two years, requiring an election to fill the vacant seats. Allegations of money, muscle power and cross-voting have dogged these elections for the last 60 years.
But before we dive into the history of the Rajya Sabha elections, let’s look at how seats in the upper House were first filled. The general elections in 1951 elected MPs to the first Lok Sabha and MLAs to the state assemblies.
With elected MLAs in place, the stage was ready for the first Rajya Sabha elections. The ECI held these elections in March 1952 and Rajya Sabha was constituted on April 3, 1952. MLAs voted to elect 204 MPs to represent states and 12 were nominated by the President. The Constitution also states that a third of upper House MPs must retire every two years. It presented a problem in deciding which among the newly elected MPs in office until 1958 would have their terms cut short.
The solution was to group Rajya Sabha MPs from each state into three equal groups. The first group would have the complete six-year tenure ending April 2, 1958. The second group would serve for four years, and the last would be MPs for two years. This grouping was also applicable to nominated MPs.
President Rajendra Prasad made the requisite order and the Election Commission held a public draw of lots at its office in Delhi on November 29, 1952.
The draw of lots threw up interesting results. For example, Dr Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy (from Madras), Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri (from UP) and Prithviraj Kapoor (nominated MP) found themselves in the two-year group. But there was an understanding that many who found themselves in the two-year bucket would come back to the upper House with full-year terms. Shastri and Kapoor were back and served in the Rajya Sabha until 1960.
Rajya Sabha polls did not invite much controversy for the first 10 years. There were the occasional murmurs of businessmen using the Upper House route to become lawmakers, but nothing more. The Congress party’s grip on its MLAs meant there were hardly any electoral upsets. But this changed in 1964. That year, the ECI held elections to fill Upper House seats from Bihar. One of the contesting candidates was Sheel Bhadra Yajee, sitting MP of the Congress party. Yajee had participated in the freedom movement and spent many years in jail.
There were six Congress candidates and five others for the eight vacant seats. One of the non-Congress contenders was an Independent candidate, businessman Rajendra Prasad Jain. With Congress hold on its MLAs waning, some of its MLAs cross-voted in favour of Jain, who won the election. Yajee, who lost the election, was informed by his well-wishers that Jain had bribed some MLAs. He knocked on the doors of the judiciary, contending that the court should scrap Jain’s election for indulging in corrupt practices.
Yajee proved that the businessman had offered bribes to two Congress MLAs. Jain had said to one of the cross-voting MLAs, “In your election, a lot of money is spent and, therefore, take some money from me and cast your first preference vote in my favour.” Yajee pursued the case doggedly, till the Supreme Court in 1967 ended Jain’s legal challenge. It upheld his election as void.
Jain’s election was one of the first cases where an election tribunal declared an upper House election void for corrupt practices. What was so far only speculated in the media and a matter of private discussion in Parliament became common knowledge. Yajee would get elected back to the Rajya Sabha.
Three years later, in 1970, widespread cross-voting in Rajya Sabha elections would occur. It would see over 80 Rajya Sabha MPs demand a debate on money power in upper House elections, and its implications on the working and preservation of parliamentary democracy. Yajee would participate in the discussion with MPs like Krishna Kant, L K Advani and Pranab Mukherjee. Advani thought the only way to stop cross-voting in elections to the upper House was through more discipline in political parties.
The writer looks at issues through a legislative lens and works at PRS Legislative Research
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The ECI held the first elections in March 1952 and Rajya Sabha was constituted on April 3, 1952
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03.03.2024
Last month, the Election Commission of India (ECI) held polls to fill 56 Rajya Sabha seats from 14 states. Without the vibrancy of a direct election, Rajya Sabha polls are usually lacklustre affairs. There are no big political rallies or a large electorate that candidates need to reach out to. The voters in these elections are Members of State Legislative Assemblies (MLAs). More often than not, there is no contest and MLAs don’t even have to cast their vote to elect a Rajya Sabha member. In the latest round of elections, for instance, there was no contest on 41 seats.
For the 15 seats that did go to polls, the candidates campaigned over lunch, dinners and intimate one-on-one interactions. And like every two years, Rajya Sabha elections make news when a political personality/ party loses what numerically appears to be a winnable election. This time, Congress candidate in Himachal Pradesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, and Alok Ranjan, the Samajwadi Party candidate who was the former chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, lost the polls. The loss was due to cross-voting by the respective party MLAs.
Rajya Sabha is a permanent House and its members have a six-year term. A third of its members retire every two years, requiring an election to fill the vacant seats. Allegations of money, muscle power and cross-voting have dogged these elections for the last 60 years.
But before we dive into the history of the Rajya Sabha elections, let’s........
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