Rajya Sabha

Parliament building in New Delhi

Barack Obama speaking in 2010 to both houses of the Indian Parliament

The Rajya Sabha ( Hindi राज्य सभा rājya sabhā [ ˈrɑːdʒjʌ ˈsʌbʱɑ ] "Assembly of States") is the second chamber of the Indian parliament . Together with the first chamber - the Lok Sabha - it forms the legislature of the state. The members of the Rajya Sabha are elected indirectly by the parliaments of the states and some union territories, and a few are also directly appointed by the president. Both houses are nominally equal. In matters of fiscal policy , however, the Lok Sabha enjoys a privilege. In the event of irreconcilable disagreements between the two chambers, there is a joint meeting, which, however, only occurs extremely rarely (up to 2015, three times since independence). Since the Lok Sabha has more than twice as many members, it actually has the power to determine the main policy content there too.

Composition, eligibility and mode of election of the representatives

According to the Indian constitution, the Rajya Sabha may have a maximum of 250 members. 12 members are determined by the President of India according to their knowledge and skills in certain fields such as science , social engagement or literature . The Rajya Sabha currently has 245 members, 233 of whom are elected by the parliaments of the states and union territories . The union territories of Chandigarh , Lakshadweep , Daman and Diu , Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Andaman and Nicobar are not represented in the Rajya Sabha as they do not have their own legislative assemblies.

The conditions for eligibility are set out in Articles 79 to 84 of the Indian Constitution. Requirements are Indian citizenship and a minimum age of 30 years. The respective representatives will be by the parliaments of the states on the mode of communicable Einzelstimmgebung ( single transferable vote ) elected for a period of 6 years. The constitution stipulates that a third of the members should be re-elected every two years. In contrast to the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha cannot be dissolved. If a seat becomes vacant, e.g. B. by resignation, disqualification or death of the office holder, a by-election or new appointment takes place. The newly elected / appointed person then serves until the end of his predecessor's term of office.

The Indian Vice President is ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

History of origin and naming

The Constitution of India came into force on January 26, 1950. It was written in English and declared India a federal state with a two-house parliament, the " House of the People " and the " Council of States ". In the early years of independent India, there was a strong tendency to replace the English language with Hindi. On May 14, 1954, the speaker of the People's House declared that it should henceforth be called Lok Sabha , and on August 23, 1954, the chairman of the Council of States followed with a declaration that it should be called Rajya Sabha in future .

Composition of the Rajya Sabha when the constitution was passed on November 26, 1949

A states		B states		C states
Country	Seats	Country	Seats	Country	Seats
Assam Bihar Bombay Madhya Pradesh Madras Orissa Punjab United Provinces West Bengal	6 21 17 12 27 9 8 31 14	Hyderabad Jammu and Kashmir Madhya Bharat Mysore Patiala and East Punjab States Union Rajasthan Saurashtra Travancore-Cochin Vindhya Pradesh	11 4 6 6 3 9 4 6 4	Ajmer and Coorg Bhopal Bilaspur and Himachal Pradesh Cooch Behar Delhi Kutch Manipur and Tripura	1 1 1 1 1 1 1
total	145	total	53	total	7th
↑ In 1950 the United Provinces were renamed Uttar Pradesh ↑ Vindhya Pradesh changed from B to C state in 1950 ↑ Cooch Behar was incorporated into West Bengal in 1950

When the constitution was passed in 1949, the Rajya Sabha consisted of 216 members, 12 of whom were to be nominated by the president and 204 to be elected by the states. The number was reduced to 215 with the dissolution of the State of Cooch Behar by 1950. The seats were assigned to the states in such a way that one seat per million inhabitants was allocated for the first 5 million, and one additional seat per two million for any population exceeding this Residents.

On March 27, 1952, the first election of representatives for the Rajya Sabha took place in the legislative assemblies of the 27 states. The 4 representatives for Jammu and Kashmir were named by the government of Jammu and Kashmir, in accordance with the special constitutional status of this state. From 1954 onwards, as in other states, these were elected by the local parliament. On April 3, 1952, the first elected Rajya Sabha was constituted.

The greatest change in the composition of the Rajya Sabha came after the (not undisputed) decision had been made to reorganize the Indian states, whose borders were largely still determined by those of the colonial era, according to ethnic-linguistic conditions. A harbinger of this was the reorganization of the state of Andhra from parts of the state of Madras in 1953. In 1956, the State Reorganization Act redrawn the boundaries between the states on a larger scale. Further border corrections and the creation of new federal states and union territories followed. As a result, the composition of the Rajya Sabha changed over time. The number of elected members has been 233 since 1987. The table below gives an overview of the composition over time.

Voting relationships in a historical overview and current composition

The following tables show the representation of the states and union territories in the Rajya Sabha since 1956 and the current party political affiliations of its current members.

Current representation of political parties in the Rajya Sabha (as of March 20, 2018)

Political party	MPs
AAP	3
AIADMK	13
AITC	12
BJD	8th
BJP	58
BPF	1
E.G	5
CPI	1
CPM	6th
DMK	4th
INC	54
INLD	1
JKPDP	2
JD (S)	1
JD (U)	7th
JMM	1
KC (M)	1
NCP	5
NPF	1
RJD	3
RPI (A)	1
SAD	3
SDF	1
SP	18th
SHS	3
TDP	6th
TRS	3
YSRCP	1
Independent & a.	6th
Nominees	8th
vacant	3

State	Voices in the Rajya Sabha
	1956	1960	1964	1966	1972	1976	1987	2001	2014
Andhra Pradesh	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	11
Assam	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th
Bihar	22nd	22nd	22nd	22nd	22nd	22nd	22nd	16	16
Bombay	27	(resolved)
Kerala	9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9	9
Madhya Pradesh	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	11	11
Madras / Tamil Nadu	17th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th	18th
Mysore / Karnataka	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
Orissa / Odisha	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Punjab	11	11	11	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th	7th
Rajasthan	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10	10
Uttar Pradesh	34	34	34	34	34	34	34	31	31
West Bengal	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16	16
Jammu and Kashmir	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th	4th
Delhi	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3	3
Himachal Pradesh	2	2	2	3	3	3	3	3	3
Manipur	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Tripura	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Maharashtra		19th	19th	19th	19th	19th	19th	19th	19th
Gujarat		11	11	11	11	11	11	11	11
Nagaland			1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Pondicherry / Puducherry			1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Haryana				5	5	5	5	5	5
Meghalaya					1	1	1	1	1
Mizoram					1	1	1	1	1
Arunachal Pradesh					1	1	1	1	1
Sikkim						1	1	1	1
Goa							1	1	1
Chhattisgarh								5	5
Jharkhand								6th	6th
Uttaranchal / Uttarakhand								3	3
Telangana									7th
total	220	224	226	228	231	232	233	233	233
^ After the reorganization of the State of Andhra in 1953, the States Reorganization Act of 1956, and the Bihar and West Bengal (Transfer of Territories) Act 1956 ↑ After the dissolution of the state of Bombay and the creation of the new states of Maharashtra and Gujarat ( Bombay Reorganization Act , 1960), as well as after border corrections between Madras and Andhra Pradesh ( Andhra Pradesh and Madras (Alteration of Boundaries) Act , 1959) ↑ After the creation of the State of Nagaland ( State of Nagaland Act , 1962) and the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, concerning Pondicherry ↑ After the division of Punjab and the creation of the state of Haryana, as well as the territorial reorganization of Himachal Pradesh ( Punjab Reorganization Act , 1966) ↑ After the creation of the federal states or union territories of Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh by the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganization) Act , 1971. ^ After Sikkim was admitted as a federal state to the Indian Union ^ After Goa was elevated to a state ( Goa, Daman and Diu Reorganization Act , 1987) ^ After the formation of the new states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal in 2001 ^ After the reorganization of Telangana state in 2014 ↑ In 1969 the state of Madras was renamed Tamil Nadu. ↑ In 1973 the state of Mysore was renamed Karnataka. ↑ In 2011 the state of Orissa was renamed Odisha. ↑ In 2006 the Union Territory of Pondicherry was renamed Puducherry. ↑ In 2006 the state of Uttaranchal was renamed Uttarakhand.

Constant voice weight since 1976

The Indian Constitution (Art. 82) originally stipulated that the allocation of seats to the individual states should be rearranged at regular intervals according to the results of the census. In 1976, the 42nd amendment to the constitution stipulated that the seating arrangements until 2001 would continue to be based on the 1971 census results. This "freeze" of the seating was decided to create an additional incentive to control population growth. This should not give states with high population growth the benefit of increased political representation. Since 1976, the total number of members of the Rajya Sabha has therefore remained the same (the only exception was the admission of Goa as a federal state in 1987, which added one member). In those cases in which since 1976 new states were created by separating old ones (these were the states of Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana), the latter had to cast a correspondingly large number of votes to the new states.

The 84th Amendment to the Constitution, which came into force in 2002, stipulated that the seating arrangements in the Rajya Sabha should remain constant for a further 25 years (i.e. based on the population conditions of 1971).

Web links

Commons : Rajya Sabha  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Rajya Sabha - official website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The term "upper house" does not seem quite appropriate for the Rajya Sabha. The Rajya Sabha is more similar in its functions to the German Federal Council than to the British House of Lords .
2. ^ THE CONSTITUTION OF INDIA, PART V: The UNION, CHAPTER II. PARLIAMENT. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 2, 2012 ; accessed on April 18, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} CHAPTER - 2: Composition of Rajya Sabha. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 5, 2016 ; Retrieved on April 18, 2015 (information from the Rajya Sabha website). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ ALPHABETICAL PARTY POSITION IN THE RAJYA SABHA. Rajya Sabha website, March 20, 2018, accessed February 20, 2015 (the number of elected representatives on this website adds up to 230, which would mean that 3 seats are vacant). 
5. ↑ Rajya Sabha Members alloted to Telangana, Andhra Pradesh. NDTV, June 4, 2014, accessed April 18, 2015 . 
6. ↑ THE CONSTITUTION (FORTY-SECOND AMENDMENT) ACT, 1976. (. No longer available online) Indian Ministry of Justice, filed by the original on 28 March 2015 ; accessed on April 18, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
7. ↑ THE CONSTITUTION (EIGHTY FOURTH AMENDMENT) ACT, 2002. Indian Ministry of Justice, accessed on April 19, 2015 (English).