Rajya Sabha

Each House of Parliament rests on a different basis of representation. The Rajya Sabha represents the States of India, and unlike the Lok Sabha it is not directly elected by the people. Instead, residents of a State first elect members to their State Legislative Assembly, and it is these elected MLAs who, in turn, elect the members of the Rajya Sabha from that State.

There are two different principles a country could follow when deciding how many seats each State gets in an Upper House. One option is symmetrical representation — giving every part of the country an equal number of seats regardless of its size or population, the way the United States gives every State exactly two seats in the Senate. This guarantees strict equality between States, but it also means a small State ends up with exactly the same voice as a much larger one. India's framers deliberately rejected this model for the Rajya Sabha. Instead, they chose an approach closer to representation according to population, fixed for each State by the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution: States with a larger population get more Rajya Sabha seats than States with a smaller population. To see how different this is from the American system, imagine if India had followed it — Uttar Pradesh, with a population of about 1998.12 lakh, would get exactly as many Rajya Sabha seats as Sikkim, whose population is only about 6.10 lakh. Under India's actual system, Uttar Pradesh instead sends 31 members to the Rajya Sabha while a much smaller State like Sikkim sends only one.

Rajya Sabha members serve a term of six years and can be re-elected. Members do not all retire together — every two years, one-third of the House retires and fresh elections are held only for those vacated seats. Because of this staggered arrangement, the Rajya Sabha as a body is never fully dissolved, which is why it is called the permanent House of Parliament. This has a real practical advantage: even when the Lok Sabha stands dissolved and elections are still to be held, the Rajya Sabha can still be called into session to handle urgent business.

Besides its elected members, the Rajya Sabha also has twelve nominated members, chosen by the President from among people who have distinguished themselves in fields such as literature, science, art, and social service — bringing expertise and perspective into the House that a purely elected body might not otherwise capture. …