Sixty-eight Rajya Sab-ha members, including Leader of the Oppos-ition Arun Jaitley, Union ministers Vilas-rao Deshmukh and Rajiv Shukla, Dr Karan Singh, former Speaker Manohar Joshi and Hema Malini, will retire next year.
Of these, 58 retire in April alone, three in January and four others in July. Three of them are nominated members — Shyam Benegal, Shobhana Bhartia and Kapila Vatsyayan — who will retire in February.
Next year’s Rajya Sabha polls will be critical for several political parties, particularly as these will be when they are busy with Assembly elections in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.
The retiring members include 10 from Uttar Pradesh; six each from Andhra Pradesh, Mah-arashtra and Bihar; five each from West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh; four from Karnataka; and three each from Gujarat, Raj-asthan, Orissa, Kerala and Delhi. Two retiring MPs are from Jhark-hand, and one each from Haryana, Uttarak-hand, Himachal Prad-esh and Chhattisgarh.