Bye Elections to the Council of States from Bihar, Odisha and Gujarat

There are six casual vacancies in the Council of States from Bihar, Gujarat and Odisha occurred due to reasons as mentioned below:

S.No States  Name of Member Cause of vacancy Term  of office up to
1. Bihar Ravi Shankar Prasad Elected to 17thLokSabha on 23.05.2019 02.04.2024
2. Gujarat Shah Amitbhai Anil chandra Elected to 17thLokSabha on 23.05.2019 18.08.2023
3. Smriti Zubin Irani Elected to 17thLokSabha on 24.05.2019 18.08.2023
4. Odisha Achyutananda Samanta Elected to 17thLokSabha on 24.05.2019 03.04.2024
5. Pratap Keshari Deb Elected to Odisha Legislative Assembly. Seat became vacant on 09.06.2019 01.07.2022
6. Soumya Ranjan Patnaik Resignation on 06.06.2019 03.04.2024

Sl.No. Events Dates and Days
1. Issue of Notifications 18thJune, 2019 (Tuesday)
2. Last Date of making nominations 25th June, 2019 (Tuesday)
3. Scrutiny of nominations 26th June, 2019 (Wednesday)
4. Last date for withdrawal of candidatures 28thJune, 2019 (Friday)
5. Date of Poll 05th July, 2019 (Friday)
6. Hours of Poll 9:00a.m.- 4:00 p.m.
7. Counting of Votes 05th July, 2019 (Friday) at 5.00 p.m.
8. Date before which election shall be completed 09th July, 2019 (Tuesday)

The Commission has decided to hold bye-elections to the Council of States from the abovementioned States to fill up the above said vacancies in accordance with the following schedule for each of the vacancies –

It is further clarified that the vacancies for Bye-elections to all Houses, including the Rajya Sabha, are considered as separate vacancies and separate notifications are issued and separate poll is taken for each of the vacancies although the programme schedule for the bye-elections may be common. This is in conformity with the provisions of Section 147 to 151 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and has been the consistent practice of the Commission in such cases. Holding of separate elections has been upheld by the Hon’ble Delhi High Court in Civil W.P. No. 132 of 1994 (A.K. Walia Vs Union of India & Others) and W.P. No. 9357 of 2006 (Satya Pal Malik Vs Election Commission of India) by its decision dated 14.01.1994 & 20.01.2009 respectively.