The Rajya Sabha: composition, election and permanence

Detail

What the Rajya Sabha is

• The Rajya Sabha is the Council of States. It is the upper House of Parliament. It mainly represents the states and Union Territories (UTs), not voters directly.
• It was first formed in 1952, together with the first Lok Sabha.

Composition (Art. 80)

• Maximum strength: 250 (Art. 80).
• Up to 238 members represent the states and UTs.

• 12 members are nominated by the President.

• Present strength: 245. Of these, 233 represent states and UTs and 12 are nominated [2]. (NCERT: 245, of whom 233 are elected; verify current.)

• How seats are shared: the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution gives each state and UT its number of seats [2].
• Seats depend on each state's population, so bigger states get more seats [2].
• Uttar Pradesh has the most seats: 31 [3].
• This differs from the US Senate, where every state gets two seats. India does not give states equal seats.

• When states were reorganised or new states were created, the number of elected seats changed. It has changed several times since 1952 [2].

• UTs: only three UTs have seats:

UT	Seats
Delhi	3
Puducherry	1
Jammu and Kashmir	4
Total	8

• Other UTs (for example Ladakh, Chandigarh and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands) have no Rajya Sabha seat.
• Qualification (Art. 84): a member must be a citizen of India and at least 30 years old [3]. (The minimum age for the Lok Sabha is 25.)

How members are elected (Art. 80(4))

• Indirect election: people do not vote for Rajya Sabha members. The elected MLAs of each state's Legislative Assembly vote for them. Nominated MLAs and members of a Legislative Council do not vote.
• For UTs with seats, the members of an electoral college for that UT vote [2].
• Method: proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote (PR-STV) [2].
• Proportional representation means a party gets seats roughly in line with its strength in the Assembly.
• Single transferable vote means each MLA ranks the candidates 1, 2, 3 and so on. If a voter's first choice has already won or is knocked out, the vote moves to the next choice.
• Result: a party with enough MLAs is sure of its share of seats, and smaller parties can also win one.

The 2003 reforms (RPA (Amendment) Act 2003)

• Why the reforms came:
• 1998: in the Maharashtra Rajya Sabha election, Congress MLAs went against the party's voting instructions. Its candidate, Ram Pradhan, lost even though the party had enough votes. Other parties also saw cross-voting [5].
  • Cross-voting means an MLA votes for a candidate other than the one their party chose. It was often linked to money or "horse-trading".
• 1997: the Rajya Sabha set up an Ethics Committee. It was headed by S.B. Chavan, who had been Chief Minister of Maharashtra [5].
• December 1998: the committee's first report backed open voting [5].

• 2001: the Vajpayee government acted on this. Law Minister Arun Jaitley brought an amending Bill [5].

• What the 2003 Act changed: 1. Open ballot (RPA 1951 s.59): an MLA must show their marked ballot paper to their party's authorised agent [5]. The aim was to stop cross-voting. 2. No domicile rule: a candidate no longer has to be a voter in the state they represent. A voter registered anywhere in India can stand.

• NOTA does not apply. NOTA ("None of the Above") is the option to reject all candidates. It cannot be used in Rajya Sabha elections (Shailesh Manubhai Parmar v. ECI, 2018). The Election Commission has issued an instruction withdrawing NOTA from ballot papers for Rajya Sabha and State Legislative Council elections [6].

• Reason: in an indirect, open-ballot election, NOTA would weaken party discipline and help defections.

Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006)

• Petitioner: Kuldip Nayar, a veteran journalist and a nominated Rajya Sabha MP. He argued that the open ballot would defeat free and fair elections [5].
• Case: Writ Petition (Civil) 217 of 2004, decided 22 August 2006 by a Constitution Bench [4].

• Two questions before the Court [4]: 1. Domicile: must a member live in, or be a voter of, the state they represent? 2. Secrecy: does the Constitution require a secret ballot?

• Held (both changes upheld):

• Residence is not essential to federalism. The Rajya Sabha represents states through the people the state's MLAs choose. It does not depend on where the member lives.
• Open ballot is valid. Secrecy of the ballot is "a vital principle", but "the higher principle … is free and fair elections and purity of elections. If secrecy becomes a source for corruption, then sunlight and transparency have the capacity to remove it" [4][5].

A permanent House (Art. 83(1))

• Never dissolved: the Rajya Sabha is not subject to dissolution (Art. 83(1)). The Lok Sabha, by contrast, is dissolved after five years or earlier.
• Term: each member serves six years.
• Rotation: one-third of members retire every second year (RPA 1951 s.154). New members are chosen in biennial elections (elections held every two years) [3].

• How it started: in 1952, lots were drawn to decide which members would retire after 2, 4 and 6 years. This set up the rotation that still runs.

• Advantage when the Lok Sabha is dissolved:

• The Rajya Sabha can still meet for urgent business.
• If an emergency proclamation (Art. 352) is issued while the Lok Sabha is dissolved, the Rajya Sabha alone approves it for the time being. The new Lok Sabha must then approve it within 30 days of its first sitting (see Section 7).

Slow change in party strength

• Chain of effects:
• Only one-third of seats change every two years →
• a big Lok Sabha win shows up in the Rajya Sabha only slowly →

• a new government can be in a minority in the Rajya Sabha for years.

• Examples (NCERT):

• The Janata government (1977) had a big Lok Sabha majority but not a Rajya Sabha one.

• The NDA (2000) also lacked a Rajya Sabha majority.

• Result: the government has to negotiate with other parties to pass ordinary bills. If the two Houses disagree on an ordinary bill, the President can call a joint sitting (Art. 108). (Current party position: verify.)

• A money bill (a bill only about taxes, government borrowing or spending) avoids the Rajya Sabha's veto. The Rajya Sabha can delay it for only 14 days.

Nominated members (Art. 80(3))

• Who: the President nominates 12 people with special knowledge or practical experience in literature, science, art and social service [2].

• Sport is not named in Art. 80(3), yet sportspersons have been nominated under these headings.

• Why: to bring people who might not win elections into Parliament, so that law-making gains from their expertise.

• NCERT thought bubble: whom do sportspersons and artists represent? They have no state or voters behind them.
• Party membership (Tenth Schedule para 2(3)):
• The Tenth Schedule is the anti-defection law: a member who changes party can lose their seat.
• A nominee may join a political party within six months of taking the seat.

• If they join a party after six months, they can be disqualified.

• Voting rights:

Election	Do nominated members vote?	Article
President	No. Only elected MPs and MLAs vote [2]	Art. 54
Vice-President	Yes. All members of both Houses vote	Art. 66

• Critiques:
• Some nominees rarely attend the House or take part in debates.
• Nominations are sometimes seen as a political reward. One example is former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, nominated in 2020 shortly after retiring. This raised concerns about judicial independence.

The representation debate

• "Council of parties": critics say the House now represents parties more than states.
• The open ballot lets party leaders see how each MLA votes.
• The dropped domicile rule lets parties send leaders from other states.

• Result: the federal role of the Rajya Sabha, as the voice of the states, looks weaker.

• Defence: the Supreme Court's view in Kuldip Nayar (2006) was that federalism does not depend on residence. Parties are a legitimate channel of representation, and clean elections matter more [4].

• NCERT question: should Rajya Sabha members be directly elected?
• For: it would give the House more legitimacy and break party control.
• Against: it would copy the Lok Sabha, and the House would no longer stand for the states.

Prelims Hooks

• Art. 80 sets the composition: maximum 250 (238 from states and UTs plus 12 nominated). Present strength is 245 (233 plus 12).
• Fourth Schedule gives Rajya Sabha seats to states and UTs by population, not equally. Uttar Pradesh has the most seats (31).
• Only Delhi (3), Puducherry (1) and J&K (4) among the UTs have seats. Ladakh has none (a common trap).
• Art. 83(1): the Rajya Sabha is never dissolved. RPA 1951 s.154: six-year term, with one-third retiring every two years.
• Electoral system: PR-STV used by elected MLAs only. Nominated MLAs and Legislative Council members do not vote.
• RPA (Amendment) Act 2003: brought in the open ballot (shown to the party's authorised agent) and dropped the domicile rule. Both were upheld in Kuldip Nayar v. Union of India (2006).
• NOTA is not allowed in Rajya Sabha or Legislative Council elections (Shailesh Manubhai Parmar v. ECI, 2018).
• Nominated members vote in the Vice-President's election but not the President's. They may join a party within six months (Tenth Schedule para 2(3)).
• Art. 84: the minimum age for the Rajya Sabha is 30 (25 for the Lok Sabha).
• Art. 80(3) lists four fields: literature, science, art, social service. "Sports" is not among them.

Mains Points

• Open ballot: is it worth the trade-off? It reduced cross-voting and money power (the 1998 Maharashtra case, the Ethics Committee's 1998 report). But it strengthened party high commands over MLAs. Kuldip Nayar (2006) put purity of elections above secrecy.
• Federal role is weakening: seats are based on population, there is no domicile rule, and voting is party-controlled. Together these make the House a "council of parties". Reform ideas include bringing back a residence rule, giving smaller states more equal representation, and holding direct elections. Each has costs, such as copying the Lok Sabha.
• Permanence as a check: rotating membership gives the House continuity. It can act when the Lok Sabha is dissolved, for example by approving an emergency. It also slows sudden changes of majority, which can block hasty laws. Critics say it can also block a fresh popular mandate, as the Janata government found in 1977 and the NDA in 2000.
• Nominated members: they add expertise, but low attendance and post-retirement nominations (Ranjan Gogoi, 2020) raise questions. A possible fix is a transparent, criteria-based nomination process, with a cooling-off period for judges.