Rajya Sabha polls on October 16: 12 seats up for grabs in UP, Uttarakhand and Bengal

Elections to 12 Rajya Sabha seats across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will be held on October 16, the Election Commission announced on Tuesday.

The polls will cover 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh and one in Uttarakhand, where the terms of the sitting members end on November 25. A bypoll will also be held for a Rajya Sabha seat in West Bengal.

The notification will be issued on September 29, while the last date for filing nominations is October 6. Votes will be counted on October 16, the poll panel said.

In Uttar Pradesh, the retiring members include BJP leaders Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Neeraj Shekhar, Brijlal, B L Verma, Seema Dwivedi and Hardeep Singh Puri, Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav and BSP's Ramji Gautam.

One more seat has been vacant since September 11 following the resignation of former Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma after his appointment as lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Of the 10 Uttar Pradesh seats, eight are currently held by the BJP, while the SP and BSP hold one each. The elections come ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls due next year.

Based on the current strength of the state Assembly, the BJP-led alliance is expected to win eight seats and the SP two.

The arithmetic leaves the BSP without enough numbers to retain Gautam's seat on its own. The party currently has no MLA in Uttar Pradesh following the death of its lone legislator, Uma Shankar Singh, in August.

In 2020, too, the BSP did not have the numbers to win a Rajya Sabha seat on its own. The BJP had then fielded eight candidates for the 10 seats, allowing Gautam to win. He was elected unopposed after the nomination of an SP-backed Independent candidate was rejected, with the SP alleging an understanding between the BJP and BSP.

In Uttarakhand, BJP member Naresh Bansal's term is ending, with the BJP having a comfortable majority in the state Assembly.

The West Bengal bypoll was necessitated by the resignation of actor-turned-politician Rukmini Mallik, popularly known as Koel Mallick, on July 16. The winner will serve the remainder of the term until April 2, 2032.

(With inputs from PTI)