Slowly & strategically: NDA close to 2/3rds Rajya Sabha majority

The NDA is assessing its numbers in Parliament as it prepares to revive the Delimitation Bill, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage

Top government sources said last week that the Centre would take up the Delimitation Bill in Parliament as soon as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) secured the required two-thirds majority needed for a Constitutional amendment in the Lok Sabha (LS), and might even call a special session for the same. The ruling alliance is, however, closer to a two-thirds majority in the Rajya Sabha (RS). Earlier in April, the Delimitation Bill linked with the amendment to the Women’s Reservation Act was defeated in the Lower House.

 

LS arithmetic 

• The NDA formed the central government after the 2024 polls with 293 seats. In LS, the two-thirds majority mark is 362, as the House has 543 seats.
• There are currently 3 constituencies with vacant seats — Assam’s Nagaon, West Bengal’s Basirhat and Meghalaya’s Shillong. The NDA hopes to win all 3. 
• On Sunday, rebel TMC MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar said 2 more parliamentarians were set to join the dissident group, which would take its strength in the LS to 22. Speaker Om Birla’s Secretariat has not confirmed whether it has received a letter from the rebel group
• The NDA could hope to get 323 votes for the Delimitation Bill if it were to win the 3 bypolls, and if the dissident faction is recognised as the ‘real TMC’, which has already announced it would support the ruling alliance. As of now, it is still short of at least 20 seats from the two-thirds majority mark.
• Government strategists said they are confident of persuading the DMK’s 22 MPs to abstain, if not vote, for the Delimitation Bill. “The DMK was convinced that the Bill, with its provisions for south India, was the best case scenario... But it opposed the Bill since the Tamil Nadu polls were due then and (because of) pressure from the Congress,” a source said.
• Meanwhile, a working paper from the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister has proposed a “targeted delimitation” model, splitting 170 existing constituencies into smaller units to increase the seats to 824. It has proposed 59 two-way splits and 111 three-way splits. Under this model, Kerala and Tamil Nadu alone account for 22 of the 59 proposed two-way splits. In cases of three-way splits, most are proposed to be in UP & Maharashtra.

 

RS maths

• In recent months, the NDA has inched close to the two-thirds mark of 164 in the Upper House, which has 245 seats.
• On Friday, Debashish Samantaray, who quit the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) last month, was elected unopp­osed on a BJP ticket, increasing the BJP’s strength in RS to 114.
• Moreover, the NDA now has the support of at least 149 MPs in the House.
• Its strength is set to increase by 3 seats once the current round of RS polls for 27 seats are concluded on June 28.
• The NDA would further add 3 more to its tally as and when elections are held to fill the vacancies that have arisen from the quitting of three TMC MPs — Sukhendu Sekhar Roy, Sushmita Dev and Prash Chik Baraik. Mamata Banerjee’s party now only has 10 MPs in the RS; however, more defections cannot be ruled out. 
• There are also smaller parties that are unaffiliated to either the NDA or the INDIA bloc — the YSRCP with 7 MPs; the BJD with 5; the AAP and the BRS with 3 each; and the BSP with 1 MP.
• Government strategists plan to lean on some of these MPs to achieve the requisite numbers to ensure the passage of Constitution Amendment bills. They are also counting on the DMK’s 8 MPs to abstain from voting on the Delimitation Bill.