Chennai: Nomination for election to six Rajya Sabha seats began on Tuesday, with indications that all members would be elected unopposed. With six members retiring on June 29, the elections if necessary will be held on June 11.
The nominations for the elections would be accepted till May 31, the Chief Electoral Officer said Tuesday.
The AIADMK, which has 134 members in the new assembly, will be able to elect 4 members on its own, while the DMK can elect two members on its own strength of 89 MLAs.
Six members – 3 from AIADMK, 2 from DMK and 1 from Congress – are retiring. The DMK has announced R.S. Bharathy and T. K.S. Elangovan for the two vacancies while the AIADMK is yet to announce candidates. The Congress, whose member E.M. Sudharsana Natchiappan, is retiring will not be able to fill vacancy since it has only 8 members.
Rajya Sabha members are usually elected without any elections, since the parties nominate number of candidates accor-ding to their strength in the Assembly.
The members who would be retiring on June 29 are AIADMK floor leader in Rajya Sabha A. Navaneethakrishnan, Manoj Paul Pandian and Rabi Bernard, K. P. Ramalingam and S. Thangavelu of the DMK and Congress’ E. M. Sudharsana Natchiappan.
Filing of nominations for the elections will begin on May 24, while May 31 will be the last date for filing of the papers. While the nominations would be scrutinised on June 1, the last date for withdrawal of nominations is June 3. On the first day today, an independent candidate filed nominations. But nominations of independent candidates are usually rejected since they lack support of MLAs.
