The opposition has suffered a major setback in the Rajya Sabha elections. Voting for 11 Rajya Sabha seats took place on Monday (16 March 2026). During this period, voting took place on 5 seats in Bihar, 4 in Odisha and two in Haryana. In Bihar and Odisha, opposition parties were not successful in keeping their MLAs united, which benefited NDA. There were 6 candidates in the fray for 5 seats in Bihar. Of these, 5 candidates were from NDA and one candidate was from the opposition alliance Grand Alliance.
NDA won all 5 seats. The winning candidates include Nitish Kumar, Nitin Nabin, Ramnath Thakur, Upendra Kushwaha and Shivesh Ram. 41 votes were required to win the Rajya Sabha elections. NDA has 202 MLAs in the 243-member assembly, due to which it was falling short of 3 votes for the 5th seat. The Grand Alliance had 35 MLAs and needed 6 additional votes to win.
Opposition candidate AD Singh got a shock
Opposition candidate AD Singh was expected to win after the support of 5 AIMIM MLAs and one Bahujan Samaj Party MLA, but at the last moment, 4 opposition MLAs, including 3 Congress and 1 RJD MLA, did not turn up to cast their votes. After there was no decision in the first preference votes, the second preference was counted, in which BJP’s Shivesh Ram won. After this, the Grand Alliance accused BJP of intimidation and horse-trading of MLAs.
Election changed due to cross voting in Odisha
In Odisha, 5 candidates were in the fray for 4 seats and 30 votes were required for victory. Here BJP’s Manmohan Samal and Sujit Kumar won. Santrup Mishra of Biju Janata Dal was also successful in winning. The biggest upset happened when BJP-backed independent candidate Dilip Ray also won. In the 147-member assembly, BJD and Congress had enough votes to make their joint candidate Datteshwar Hota win, but 8 MLAs of BJD and 3 of Congress went against the party line and cross-voted in favor of Dilip Ray. After this, Naveen Patnaik accused BJP of horse-trading and talked about action against rebel MLAs.
BJP and Congress one seat each in Haryana
Voting was held for 2 seats in Haryana, but due to complaints of violation of voting secrecy, the counting of votes was halted for about 5 hours. In the end, Sanjay Bhatia of BJP and Karmaveer Boudh of Congress won one seat each. Independent candidate Satish Nandal had to face defeat. In the counting of votes, Sanjay Bhatia got 31 votes, Karmaveer Boudh got 28 votes and Satish Nandal got 27 votes. Congress candidate Karmaveer Boudh won by one vote.
Win unopposed on 26 seats
The Election Commission of India had last month announced elections for 37 Rajya Sabha seats from 10 states. Of these, voting was not held on 26 seats in 7 states because there was only one candidate and he was elected unopposed. These include leaders like Sharad Pawar, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Ramdas Athawale and Tiruchi Shiva.
