- By Shubham Bajpai
- Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:36 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Rajya Sabha's 71 seats will go to polls this year as the six-year term of the MPs is set to end. Among them are 5 seats from Bihar, where the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, returned to power with a sweeping mandate in November last year.
While the NDA is looking to emerge victorious on four seats comfortably, a neck-and-neck is likely to take place on the fifth seat.
Who will vote for 5 Rajya Sabha seats?
For the elections of the Rajya Sabha seat in a particular state, the members of the legislative assembly vote to elect the candidates.
The Bihar Legislative Assembly has a strength of 243. The ruling NDA has 202 MLAs while the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan has 35 seats. AIMIM has 5 seats, while BSP has one MLA.
What is RS equations?
In a 243 MLA setup, the winning quota, the number of votes required for a candidate to win the election, is 41.
With the votes of 164 MLAs out of its 202, the NDA can win 4 out of 5 seats easily. For the fifth seat, it would be left with only 38 votes and hence would need the support of 3 more MLAs for a full sweep.
Mahagathbandhan, on the other hand, has 35 seats, six less than the winning quota.
This equation makes AIMIM and BSP key players who have 5 and 1 seats each. In order to stop NDA from a clean sweep, the only way forward is a united opposition throwing its weight behind a single candidate.
As the elections are held using an open ballot system, the possibility of cross-voting is already less.