Polls for one Punjab, 4 J&K Rajya Sabha seats on Oct 24

More than four-and-a-half years after four Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) fell vacant, the Election Commission (EC) on Wednesday announced that polls to these seats would be held on October 24. The last elections for these seats were conducted a decade ago in 2015, when J&K was still a state.

In addition, byelection to one Rajya Sabha seat from Punjab will also be held on the same day. The seat fell vacant on July 1 after AAP MP Sanjeev Arora resigned following his victory in the Ludhiana West Assembly bypoll.

The four J&K seats have been vacant since February 2021, following the retirement of Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Shamsher Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Nazir Ahmed Laway. Fayaz and Laway represented the PDP, Azad was then with the Congress, and Shamsher Singh was from the BJP.

According to the EC, elections could not be held earlier due to the absence of the required electorate after the bifurcation of the erstwhile state into the union territories of J&K and Ladakh on August 5, 2019. With the J&K Legislative Assembly now constituted, the biennial polls to the Council of States will go ahead.

As per the schedule, notifications for the election will be issued on October 6. Nominations can be filed till October 13, scrutiny will be held on October 14 and the last date for withdrawal is October 16. Polling will take place on October 24 from 9 am to 4 pm, with counting the same evening at 5 pm.

The EC has notified three separate elections to fill the four J&K vacancies -- two seats through individual polls and the remaining two in a combined election. Regional parties and the Congress had been urging the Commission to hold these elections since the Assembly polls last year.

As per the current strength of the J&K Assembly (88 members, after one BJP MLA’s death and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah vacating his Budgam seat), the ruling National Conference-led alliance, with 53 members, is expected to bag at least three of the four seats, while the BJP is likely to secure the fourth. However, with seven independents -- four backing the alliance and three unattached -- cross-voting cannot be ruled out, as Independents are not bound to show their marked ballots.

Meanwhile, AAP MLA Mehraj Malik, who is under preventive detention under the Public Safety Act, will be entitled to vote. Under Section 62(5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, only those in prison or police custody are barred from voting, not those under preventive detention.