By-elections for 3 Rajya Sabha seats of Bengal will be held on July 24, Election Commission announces

Three Rajya Sabha MPs of Trinamool Congress had resigned from their membership a few days ago. Now by-elections have been announced for these seats. The Election Commission has said that elections will be held for these three seats on July 24 and the results will also be declared on the same day. There is full hope that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) can now make the three MPs who resigned as its candidates and based on the number of its MLAs, all three of its candidates can easily win.

The leaders who resigned include the names of Sukhendu Shekhar Ray, Sushmita Dev and Prakash Chik Badaik. Till now these three leaders have not joined BJP but immediately after their resignation, these leaders have been seen meeting BJP leaders and have also started praising BJP openly. Of these, the tenure of the seats of Sukhendu Shekhar Ray and Prakash Chik Badaik is till March 2029 and the tenure of the seat of Sushmita Dev is till April 2030. All three of them had also left TMC along with resigning their membership in the month of June.

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What is the timeline of elections?

According to the Election Commission, notification for these seats will be issued on July 7. The last date for filing nomination is July 14. Scrutiny of nomination papers will take place on July 15 and nominations can be withdrawn on July 17. Voting will be held on July 24 from 9 am to 4 pm. Counting of votes will take place on July 24 itself from 5 pm onwards. However, if there are only three candidates for three seats, then all three candidates will be declared victorious on July 17.

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The effect of this election will be that BJP’s number of Rajya Sabha MPs will increase by 3 more and it will be stronger in the Upper House of Parliament. After 7 Rajya Sabha MPs of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) joined BJP, the number of BJP MPs in Rajya Sabha reached 113. Then TMC had 13 Rajya Sabha MPs but after the resignation of 3 MPs, its number has now come down to 10.