24 seats fall vacant in Bihar legislative council

The deadly Covid-19 pandemic has not only affected common people but also lawmakers. It is evident from the fact that due to delay in the panchayat polls, the vacant seats could not be filled up on time. With the delay, 24 seats will fall vacant today in Bihar egislative council, writes Amit Bhelari, Patna Bureau Chief, ETV Bharat.

Patna: It seems that the deadly Covid-19 pandemic has not only affected common people but also lawmakers. It is evident from the fact that due to delay in the panchayat polls, the vacant seats could not be filled up on time. With the delay, 24 seats will fall vacant today in Bihar legislative council. The term of 19 MLCs will end on Friday because they are elected from the local bodies but the delay in the panchayat elections will keep their seats vacant in the council. Already, five seats have are vacant taking the number of vacancies to 24 including three members who moved to Assembly, while two died. The three MLCs who got elected to the Assembly were Ritlal Yadav, Manoj Yadav and Dilip Rai, while Hari Narayan Choudhary and Sunil Kumar Singh of Bhartiya Janata Party passed away recently.

Interestingly, the Janata Dal United (JDU) will now dominate in council ahead of the monsoon session commencing from July 26. Nitish Kumar's JDU will be the single largest party in the council with 22 MLCs, while BJP will be having just 15 MLCs.

Out of total strength of 75 seats in the council, earlier JDU had 28 members, followed by BJP with 26 members. Earlier, the difference was just two seats between JDU and BJP but now the gap has widened a bit.

As per the rule, 27 MLCs are elected by the members of Bihar legislative assembly, 24 are elected through the members of local bodies, six each from graduate and teachers constituencies and 12 are nominated by the Governor of the state.

From JDU quota, the term of six MLCs will end today which includes Reena Yadav (Nalanda), Salman Ragbi (Nawada), Manorama Devi (Gaya), Radhan Charan Shah (Bhojpur), Dinesh Singh (Muzaffarpur) and Sanjay Prasad (Munger).

From BJP quota whose term will end today are Sachidanand Rai (Saran), Ranjish Kumar (Begusarai), Nutan Singh (Saharsha), Ashok Agarwal (Katihar), Dilip Jaiswal (Kishanganj), Santosh Kumar Singh (Rohtas), Suman Mahaseth (Madhubani), Aditya Narayan Pandey (Gopalganj), Rajesh Kumar (East Champaran), Tunna Ji Pandey (Siwan).

Similarly from RJD quota Subodh Kumar Singh from Vaishali and Rajesh Ram from West Champaran district from Congress quota term will end today bringing the total strength to around 50 seats.

The process of panchayat election has already started in the state and it will take at least three to four months for things to fall in place. However, if the third wave of corona hits the State, then the election may get delayed further.

Apart from JDU and BJP, RJD has 5 MLCs, Congress 3, CPI 2, HAM 1, VIP 1 and Independent 1.