Bypolls to 4 Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu and Kashmir on Oct 24: Election Commission

The bypolls to the four Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu & Kashmir will be held on October 24, the Election Commission announced on Wednesday. The voting and counting will be held on the same day, the poll panel said.

The bypoll to one Rajya Sabha seat from Punjab will also be held on October 24, according to the schedule released by the poll panel. The seat in Punjab was vacant after the resignation of Member of Parliament (MP) Sanjeev Arora in July. Arora is now a minister in the Punjab government.

For the four Upper House seats from Jammu and Kashmir, the notification will be announced on October 6. The last date for filing the nomination would be October 13 while the nominations can be withdrawn by October 16.

The terms of Ghulam Nabi Azad, Shamsher Singh Manhas, Nazir Ahmad Laway, and Fayaz Ahmad Mir – the four Rajya Sabha MPs – had ended in February 2021.

Last Rajya Sabha polls for J-K held in February 2015

The elections for these seats could not be conducted earlier as Jammu and Kashmir was under President's rule until October 2024. Now that the Union Territory has an elected assembly, the poll panel announced the dates for the Rajya Sabha polls.

The last Rajya Sabha elections in Jammu and Kashmir were held in February 2015, when the BJP-PDP alliance won three seats and the NC-Congress alliance bagged one. The ruling national conference has been raising the issue of vacant Rajya Sabha seats from Jammu and Kashmir. 

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjeev Arora resigned from the Rajya Sabha on July 1, 2025, after he won the assembly bypoll to the Ludhiana West constituency in Punjab. Arora's term was supposed to end in April 2028.