1) All 41 candidates from Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Telangana were elected unopposed on Friday after the biennial elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats were announced recently.
2) Polling for the 16 seats spread across states like Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka is being held today due to the number of candidates exceeding the seats. Some prominent leaders, whose fates will be decided at 5 pm when the counting of the votes will take place, include Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik. Notably, discontent had surfaced in the Congress party after the announcement of nominees for the Upper House.
3) The high-stakes polls to maintain authority over the upper house of the Parliament have kept parties on edge as entry of 57 new MPs - elected over two weeks - in the upper house of parliament is expected to change the current dynamics. After getting two Rajya Sabha candidates (Sitharaman and Jaggesh) elected on its own strength, the BJP will be left with an additional 32 votes. The Congress, after seeing former Union minister Jairam Ramesh through, will be left with 24 votes. The JD(S) has only 32 MLAs, which is not enough to win a seat.
4) With seven candidates in the fray for six seats Maharashtra is witnessing a heavyweight content after two decades. With BJP fielding Piyush Goyal, Anil Bonde, Dhananjay Mahadik against NCP's Praful Patel, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut and Sanjay Pawar and Congress' Imran Pratapgarhi. BJP MLAs have been lodged in Taj President in Cuffe, the Sena MLAs were lodged at Nariman Point.
5) In Haryana, polling is underway for two seats. The Congress party has nominated senior leader Ajay Maken while the BJP has fielded former minister Krishan Lal Panwar. While the BJP-JJP alliance has lodged their MLAs to a resort in Chandigarh, the Congress leaders were moved to a resort in the city.
6) Haryana Congress senior leader, Kuldeep Bishnoi is already upset with the party's recent decisions. Besides this, another problem for the party has come in the form of the candidature of media baron, Kartikey Sharma whose father and father-in-law are former Congress leaders and are known to have influence in the state politics.
7) Six candidates are in the fray for the Rajya Sabha poll to four seats from Karnataka. JD(S) has fielded entrepreneur and social worker Kupendra Reddy as its first candidate in the Rajya Sabha election against Congress' Mansoor Ali Khan.
8) A day ahead of the polling, former state chief minister and Janata Dal (Secular) leader HD Kumaraswamy on Thursday urged the Congress to give its second preferential votes to JDS, if it really wanted to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party.
9) Polling is underway for four Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan. The Congress has fielded Mukul Wasnik, Randeep Surjewala and Pramod Tiwari, a prominent Uttar Pradesh politician, while the BJP has chosen former minister Ghanshyam Tiwari, who earlier was a vocal critic of former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje. Media baron Subhash Chandra has made the contest interesting by entering the fray as a BJP-backed independent candidate
10) In Rajasthan, the resort politics took the driving seat as the Congress MLAs were tossed between Udaipur and Jaipur. Mobile internet services were suspended for 12 hours starting 9 pm on Thursday in Jaipur's Amber tehsil where the Congress and other supporting MLAs are staying ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls. The divisional commissioner issued the order to suspend the services stating security threat to the protected people staying and moving in the area.
