Elected to LS, Shah, Prasad cease to be RS members

Having been elected to the Lok Sabha, BJP leaders Amit Shah and Ravi Shankar Prasad and DMK leader Kanimozhi ceased to be members of the Upper House of Parliament from May 23, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat said on Wednesday.

A circular from the Secretariat, dated May 28, said the three "ceased to be Members of Rajya Sabha from the date of their being chosen as Members of Lok Sabha -- May 23".

According to the Representation of the People Act 1951, if a person who is already a member of the Rajya Sabha is chosen as a member of the Lok Sabha, his seat in the Upper House shall become vacant on the date on which he was elected.

Shah, the BJP President, was elected to the Lok Sabha from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. Ravi Shankar Prasad was elected from Patna Sahib in Bihar.

Kanimozhi, who was a member of the Upper House from Tamil Nadu, was elected from Thoothukudi in the state.

As part of a pre-election deal, the BJP is expected to fill the Bihar seat with Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Ram Vilas Paswan, who may become a Minister in the Modi Cabinet.

Similarly, for the Tamil Nadu and Gujarat seats, the BJP may bring leaders who were not part of any of the two Houses but may get a place in the Union Cabinet.

In the 16th Lok Sabha, 12 of the 25 cabinet Ministers were from the Rajya Sabha -- Arun Jaitley, Suresh Prabhu, Ravi Shankar Prasad, J.P. Nadda, Chaudhary Birender Singh, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Dharmendra Pradhan, Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.

--IANS

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