Rajya Sabha polls set for October 16 in three states

The Election Commission of India announced on Tuesday that polls for 12 Rajya Sabha seats across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will be held on October 16, with votes counted the same day. The figure covers 11 biennial seats whose sitting members retire in November, plus one West Bengal bypoll, though some descriptions of the announcement treat the bypoll separately and cite 11 seats in the biennial elections. Ten of the seats are in Uttar Pradesh, where the terms of nine sitting members end on November 25. Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri is among the retiring members. One Uttar Pradesh seat has been vacant since September 11, when Dinesh Sharma resigned after being appointed lieutenant governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Of the 10 Uttar Pradesh seats, eight are held by the Bharatiya Janata Party, with one each held by the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. The single Uttarakhand seat is held by BJP member Naresh Bansal, whose term also ends on November 25. The West Bengal bypoll fills the vacancy created by the resignation of Trinamool Congress MP Rukmini Mallik, also known as actor Koel Mallick, who stepped down on July 16.