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.