Two additional seats for BJP – one each from Himachal Pradesh and UP due to cross-voting – will take the party’s tally in Rajya Sabha to 97.
The NDA, with 117 members, is now only four short of the majority mark of 121.Once all 56 members elected in the biennial polls take oath, the strength of the upper House will stand at 240 after factoring in five vacancies (four from J&K and one from the nominated member category).
Forty-one of the 56 members got elected unopposed whereas 15 seats (10 in UP, four in Karnataka and one in HP) went to polls on Tuesday due to fielding of additional candidates by the NDA in three states. As per final results, BJP won 30 of the 56 seats.
During the biennial polls, the highest 10 seats were at stake in UP followed by six each in Maharashtra and Bihar; five each in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal; four each in Karnataka and Gujarat; three each in Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan; and one each in Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Chhattisgarh.
After Tuesday’s poll, BJP remains the single-largest party in RS with 97 members (including five nominated members who joined the party). It is followed by Congress with 29 members, Trinamool Congress with 13, DMK and AAP with 10 each, BJD and YSRCP with nine each, BRS with seven, RJD with six, CPM with five, and AIADMK and JD(U) with four each.