Why Rajya Sabha majority after a decade has nothing big to cheer for NDA

With the BJP and its allies winning 11 of the 12 Rajya Sabha polls on Tuesday (August 27), the ruling NDA combine has finally secured the simple majority that had evaded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in Parliament’s Upper House for the past decade. Yet, the feat may not give the Modi government much to cheer about, at least not immediately.

The bypolls, necessitated by the election of 10 Rajya Sabha MPs to the Lok Sabha in June and the resignation of two others, also saw the Congress barely managing to protect its claim for the post of Leader of Opposition in the Upper House. Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi’s return to the Rajya Sabha as the MP from Telangana has taken his party’s tally in the House to 27 MPs, just two more than the required number for the largest Opposition party to retain the LoP’s post, and far behind the BJP’s bench strength of 96 members.

NDA’s Upper House victory

The NDA’s tally in the Upper House stands at 122 MPs (including six nominated members and independent MP Kartikeya Sharma) against 88 MPs (including independent MP Kapil Sibal) of the Congress-led INDIA bloc. The Rajya Sabha now has 237 MPs against its full strength of 245 members. There are eight vacancies; four for MPs to be elected from Jammu and Kashmir and four for nominated members. The current strength of the House puts the half-way mark at 119, which the NDA has breached. The ruling coalition can also hope to cross the simple majority mark of 123 MPs in a full House if all vacancies for nominated members are filled up by the President.

As far as numbers go, Tuesday’s bypoll results must bring great cheer to the Prime Minister. For the past decade, despite a brute majority in the Lok Sabha, the BJP had to sometimes tread cautiously with its legislative business in the Rajya Sabha as it lacked a majority in the latter. Of course, during Modi’s second term in power, particularly since Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar took ex-officio charge as Rajya Sabha Chairman, the government had abandoned this caution as mass suspension of Opposition MPs was normalised and controversial Bills passed without any debate or resistance.

Easing legislative business

With a simple majority in the Upper House and a comfortable one in the Lok Sabha, the NDA can, in theory, hope to get its way in transacting legislative business. The comfort that Tuesday’s near dozen wins provide to Modi and his coalition may, ironically, be only illusory. Curiously, the BJP’s social media team, which goes into hyperdrive on the smallest of the party’s achievements, has also been rather muted over the Rajya Sabha triumph.

“The NDA now has a majority in both Houses but it is almost comical because the BJP has weakened in strength in the Lok Sabha which has placed its legislative agenda at the mercy of tricky allies and a robust Opposition. Even in the Rajya Sabha, though officially the INDIA bloc numbers may be far less than the NDA, the BJP doesn’t have a majority of its own and will be more dependent on allies now than before because unlike the past 10 years it can’t hope for the tacit support of Jagan Reddy’s YSRCP and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD. In effect, despite this majority, Modi and the BJP can’t ride roughshod over allies and the Opposition while pushing important Bills,” believes Ramesh Dixit, political commentator and former head of Lucknow University’s political science department.

Agenda stymied

That the BJP has found its legislative agenda somewhat stymied by difficult allies has been evident ever since Modi returned to power for a third term this June. With the BJP failing to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha on its own, its dependence on allies such as Nitish Kumar’s JD (U), Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP and even Chirag Paswan’s LJP (RV) has been all too evident.

With each of these allies concerned about the impact of BJP’s political manoeuvres on their own electoral base, these allies have struck discordant notes on issues such as the Wakf Amendment Bill and lateral entry recruitment in the bureaucracy. The Centre was forced to refer the Wakf Bill to a joint parliamentary committee for further scrutiny while it had to instruct the UPSC to withdraw its advertisement seeking applications for lateral appointments to 45 posts in the government after allies like JD (U) and LJP joined the Opposition’s chorus against such recruitment.

Privately even senior ministers in the Modi cabinet concede that the NDA’s majority in the Rajya Sabha under the current political circumstances offers Modi little reason to cheer. “Ab iska kya fayda (what’s the point of this majority now)”, a Union minister from the BJP told The Federal, adding, “if we had this majority during the previous two terms, we could have easily pushed Bills like Wakf Amendment but now we have to move very carefully because we have to keep allies happy... barring the JD (U) (which has four MPs in the Rajya Sabha), all our other allies have just one or two MPs in the Rajya Sabha but that is of no consequence because it is their support in the Lok Sabha that is of greater importance... if they do not support us in the Lok Sabha, it will not matter even if BJP gets over 100 MPs in the Rajya Sabha”.

BJP's performance important

A junior minister from the BJP also pointed out that though the NDA may have presently crossed the majority mark in the Rajya Sabha, “the number may not hold beyond 2026” as terms of nearly 65 members of the Upper House are set to expire during that year. “Between September this year and November next year, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi and Bihar will go to polls. If we do not perform well in these elections, it will have a direct adverse impact on our Rajya Sabha numbers in 2026 because we will not be able to get as many MPs re-elected as we have now.”

Interestingly, during a recent public meeting in Maharashtra, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge too had urged his audience to ensure that his party and its allies, Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena (UBT) and Sharad Pawar’s NCP (SP), win an absolute majority in the state assembly polls due later this year because “then we can ensure more of our MPs are elected to the Rajya Sabha”.

'Not a major cause for alarm'

Sources in the Opposition also admit that though the current composition of the Rajya Sabha is “not a major cause for alarm”, they need to be vigilant against BJP’s attempts to trigger defections from its ranks, particularly from parties such as the YSRCP, BJD and even the AAP.

“These three parties have nearly 30 MPs between them. The BJP has already poached one BJD MP (Mamata Mohanta; she will now return to the Upper House as a BJP MP after her victory on Tuesday) and we believe it is trying to poach more from the BJD as well as the YSRCP. Of AAP’s 10 MPs, Swati Maliwal has already made it clear that her loyalties now lie with the BJP and there may be others from the party who the BJP may be in touch with... several AAP MPs are from a business background and may be easy for the BJP to intimidate through central agencies like the ED,” a senior Rajya Sabha MP from an INDIA bloc party said.