Congress set to lose grip on RS

The Congress, the leader of the ruling coalition United Progressive Alliance (UPA), is set to lose some power in the Rajya Sabha (RS) as the term for 55 seats in the Upper House ends in April.

According to party sources, the Congress, which has just 72 members out of 245 seats in the Upper House, may reduce to around 65 seats, while the strength of the Opposition is set to go up.

Politically, it means that the Congress will need to depend more on the allies and the Left forces to pass legislation in Parliament. In April, the second largest party in the UPA "" M Karunanidhi's Dravida Munnettra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu "" will get at least three more seats.

Any Bill requires majority vote in both the Houses of Parliament before it is considered passed and sent to the President for her consent.

The blow for the Congress will come from states like Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. The four seats in Karnataka will remain vacant to add to the worries of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

The Assembly has been dissolved in Karnataka so re-election on these seats will have to wait till the Assembly elections. Currently, the Congress holds three out of these four seats.

In this situation, the Congress and its allies in the UPA have to accommodate seats for as many as seven ministers if at all the leaders decide to retain them.

These ministers are T Subbarami Reddy, Premchand Gupta, Suresh Pachouri, Murli Deora, Prithviraj Chavan, GK Vasan and MV Rajasekharan. Later in the year, the Congress will have to struggle to re-elect two more ministers "" Akhilesh Das from Uttar Pradesh and Saifuddin Soz from Jammu and Kashmir.

Of the three seats in Rajasthan that will go to polls before April, two were held by the Congress. However, in the normal calculations of the Rajya Sabha polls, the Congress cannot win more than one seat. Situation is similar in Madhya Pradesh.

In Chhattisgarh, the Congress will have to make a choice between re-electing Motilal Vora or Ramadhar Kashyap. Of the four seats in Gujarat, the Congress is not expected to win more than one seat.

In Himachal Pradesh, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to power with a thumping majority, the lone seat is going to the saffron brigade. Later in the year, the Congress will lose one Uttarakhand seat to the BJP.

While the Congress is all set to gain in Andhra Pradesh, its neighbouring state Tamil Nadu will not bring much joy for Sonia Gandhi. Her key ally, the DMK will win on at least four of the six seats which will go to polls before April.

This means, the Congress will need to give more patient hearing to the demands of its main southern ally.

Even as the DMK gains, another UPA ally, Lalu Prasad's RJD in Bihar will lose at least two seats to the National Democratic Alliance in the Rajya Sabha.