Chennai: Elections to six Rajya Sabha seats will be held on June 11 to fill vacancies created due to retirement of members from Tamil Nadu.
Six members — three from AIADMK, two from DMK and one from Congress — are retiring on June 29 and elections to fill the vacancies will be held on June 11 if necessary, the Election Commission announced.
The AIADMK currently has strength of 12 members in Rajya Sabha, the DMK 4, CPI and Congress one each. Since members to Rajya Sabha are elected by MLAs, the strength of the parties in the Upper House would be decided by the numbers that they get in the Assembly elections.
Rajya Sabha members are usually elected without any elections, since the parties nominate number of candidates according 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.
