The Rajya Sabha Seats 245 Members, Is Never Dissolved, Renews About One Third of Itself Every Second Year and Cannot Amend a Money Bill

Article 80 of the Constitution lets the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, have at most 250 members: up to 238 representatives of the states and union territories, plus 12 nominated by the President. The Fourth Schedule, the table that divides the seats, fills 233 of the 238, so the House has 245 members at full strength, the Rajya Sabha Secretariat says. Its English name in the Constitution is the Council of States.

The House differs from the Lok Sabha, the directly elected lower house, in four ways. State assemblies elect it, it is never dissolved, a third of it retires every second year, and the government does not depend on its confidence.

Why the ceiling is 250 and the House has 245

The number came from the Constituent Assembly. The Union Constitution Committee proposed a Council of States of 250 members in a report presented on 21 July 1947, according to the Secretariat’s history, and the Drafting Committee kept the figure with 15 presidential nominees. In 1949 B. R. Ambedkar moved amendments to cut the nominees to 12 and to make 250 a ceiling instead of a fixed strength, and the seat table went into the Constitution as a schedule presented on 17 October 1949 and accepted without debate. (For the wider story of that Assembly, see our account of how the Constitution was written.)

The elected strength was 205 in 1949 and is 233 today, because new states and union territories brought new seats. The first Rajya Sabha was constituted on 3 April 1952 with 216 members, 204 elected and 12 nominated, and met for the first time on 13 May 1952.

Seats follow population, not equality. According to the Secretariat’s table, Uttar Pradesh has 31, Maharashtra 19, Tamil Nadu 18, and Bihar and West Bengal 16 each. Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Puducherry have one each. Three union territories send members: Jammu and Kashmir four (since 31 October 2019), Delhi three and Puducherry one. The Secretariat points out that several other countries give every state equal weight in an upper house and that India does not. Our guide to the Constitution’s schedules covers the Fourth Schedule table.

The 12 nominees must have “special knowledge or practical experience” in literature, science, art and social service, under Article 80(3). A 2012 challenge to one nomination reached the Delhi High Court, which held that the four fields are examples, not a closed list, according to the Secretariat’s handbook. The Court dismissed the petition.

The names Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha came from announcements by the presiding officers in 1954. The Speaker named his House on 14 May 1954, and the Chairman of the Council of States did the same on 23 August 1954. The Constitution still uses the English names.

How a member is elected: one vote that can move

The members for each state are elected by the elected members of that state’s Legislative Assembly, by proportional representation using the single transferable vote, under Article 80(4). Nominated assembly members do not vote. Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir use an electoral college of the elected members of their own assemblies.

Each assembly member casts one vote however many seats are up, and marks candidates 1, 2, 3 in order of preference. A candidate wins by reaching the quota. When several seats are filled, every ballot counts as 100 and the quota is the total value divided by one more than the number of seats, plus one, ignoring any remainder. The Secretariat’s handbook works one case: seven seats, 140 valid votes, and a quota of 1,751. A candidate who reaches that figure is safe, because eight candidates at 1,751 would need more votes than the 14,000 in the count. Votes above the quota pass to the voter’s next choice, so a party’s strength in the assembly decides roughly how many of the seats it wins.

To stand, a person must be a citizen, at least 30 years old (Article 84), and an elector in any parliamentary constituency in India. Until 2003 the candidate had to be an elector in the state he or she would represent.

The Representation of the People (Amendment) Act, 2003, in force from 28 August 2003, removed that residence rule and replaced the secret ballot with an open one, in which an elector shows the vote to the authorised representative of his or her party. Petitioners argued that this broke federalism and the secrecy of the ballot. The Union cited the first report of Parliament’s Ethics Committee, adopted on 15 December 1999, which had noted “the emerging trend of cross-voting” and allegations that money influenced these elections. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court dismissed all the petitions on 22 August 2006. It wrote that “If secrecy becomes a source for corruption then sunlight and transparency have the capacity to remove it.”

The House that never dissolves

Article 83(1) says the Council of States “shall not be subject to dissolution”, and that as nearly as possible one third of its members retire at the end of every second year. A member’s term is six years. The Lok Sabha, by contrast, runs five years unless dissolved sooner (Article 83(2)).

The staggering had to be built by hand in 1952. A presidential order shortened the terms of some of the first members, and the Election Commission drew lots in public on 29 November 1952. Seventy-two members were placed in the group retiring in 1958, and 71 each in the groups retiring in 1956 and 1954, with every retirement falling on 2 April. Two members from small groups already had two-year terms and were left out of the draw.

The cycle has bent since. The Secretariat records that dissolved state assemblies and mid-term elections have disturbed it since 1968, which is why the Constitution says “as nearly as possible”. New states also force draws. When Telangana was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, the reorganisation Act let the Chairman draw lots to choose which seven of Andhra Pradesh’s members would represent Telangana. He did so on 30 May 2014.

What it can do to a bill, and what it cannot

No ordinary bill becomes law without the Rajya Sabha’s agreement, and a bill can start in either House. If the two disagree, Article 108 lets the President call a joint sitting once one House rejects the bill, the Houses finally disagree on amendments, or more than six months pass without action. The bill passes by a majority of all members of both Houses present and voting, and the Lok Sabha, whose maximum under Article 81 is 550, is more than twice the size of the Rajya Sabha. Joint sittings have happened three times, according to the Secretariat’s FAQ: 6 and 9 May 1961 on the Dowry Prohibition Bill, 1959; 17 May 1978 on the Banking Service Commission (Repeal) Bill, 1977; and 26 March 2002 on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, 2002.

A constitutional amendment gets no joint sitting. Each House must pass it separately by the special majority in Article 368, covered in our piece on how the Constitution is amended. The Secretariat lists three amendment bills that fell in the Rajya Sabha for want of the required majority: the 24th Amendment Bill on privy purses in 1970, and the 64th and 65th Amendment Bills in 1989.

Money is different. Article 109 bars a Money Bill from the Rajya Sabha, which gets it after the Lok Sabha has passed it. The Rajya Sabha has 14 days to return the bill with recommendations, and the Lok Sabha may accept or reject any of them. If the Lok Sabha accepts none, or the 14 days run out, the bill is deemed passed as the Lok Sabha passed it. Article 110 defines a Money Bill as one containing only provisions on taxes, government borrowing, the Consolidated Fund of India and matters incidental to them. The Rajya Sabha cannot vote on the demands for grants for ministries, which go to the Lok Sabha under Article 113(2). The Budget is still laid before it for debate, and no money leaves the Consolidated Fund without an Appropriation Bill that both Houses pass.

Ambedkar drew the contrast with Britain in the Constituent Assembly. The House of Lords “merely concurs” in the Commons’ money decisions, he said, whereas India was “conferring a privilege which ordinarily the upper chamber does not possess.” Recommendations have sometimes mattered: the Lok Sabha accepted the Rajya Sabha’s changes to the Income-tax (Amendment) Bill, 1961, and rejected those to the Finance Bills of 1977 and 1978.

The Council of Ministers answers to the Lok Sabha alone (Article 75(3)), so the Rajya Sabha can question the government but cannot remove it.

Who decides what is a Money Bill

Article 110(3) says the Lok Sabha Speaker’s decision on whether a bill is a Money Bill “shall be final”. Whether a court can look behind that certificate is an open question. The Aadhaar Act, 2016 was passed as a Money Bill. On 26 September 2018 the Supreme Court’s majority held it correctly certified, because section 7 had the elements of a Money Bill and the other provisions were incidental to that core. Justice D. Y. Chandrachud dissented. Justice Ashok Bhushan, concurring, agreed that a Speaker’s certificate can be reviewed when it breaches the Constitution.

A five-judge bench revisited the point in Rojer Mathew v. South Indian Bank on 13 November 2019, over a Finance Act that changed tribunal appointments. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi’s judgment held that the Speaker’s decision is not beyond judicial review but that the scope of that review is “extremely restricted” (paragraph 110), and referred the question of what counts as a Money Bill to a larger bench. Justice Deepak Gupta, in a separate opinion, agreed on all three points, and Justice D. Y. Chandrachud, who would have held that the tribunal provisions were not a Money Bill, agreed with the reference. The Court’s record of 12 October 2023 shows seven judges on the batch and a hearing listed for 30 January 2024. The Supreme Court Observer’s page, last updated on 19 August 2025, still lists it as pending.

Two powers that only the Rajya Sabha holds

Article 249 lets Parliament make laws on a subject in the State List, which is reserved for the states, if the Rajya Sabha passes a resolution by at least two-thirds of members present and voting saying it is necessary or expedient in the national interest. The resolution lasts up to one year and can be renewed a year at a time. A law made this way lapses six months after the resolution does. The Secretariat records resolutions in 1952 and 1986. The 101st Amendment added goods and services tax to the article from 16 September 2016.

In the Constituent Assembly the draft was attacked as anti-federal, and Ambedkar’s amendment of 13 June 1949 limited it to one year at a time. The Secretariat reads the two-thirds vote as standing in for the states’ consent.

Article 312 works the same way for all-India services, which recruit officers for the Union and the states together. The Rajya Sabha passed such resolutions in 1961 and 1965, and clause (2) treats the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service as already created under the article.

The House has a third role when the Lok Sabha is not there. If the President proclaims a national emergency, President’s Rule in a state, or a financial emergency (see our guide to the emergency provisions) while the Lok Sabha is dissolved, the Rajya Sabha can approve it inside the deadline. It was specially convened for the purpose in 1977, for Tamil Nadu and Nagaland, and in 1991, for Haryana.

The chair, and the House’s own first words

The Vice-President is ex officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha under Article 89(1). Members of both Houses, nominated ones included, elect the Vice-President by single transferable vote on a secret ballot (Article 66). The candidate must be at least 35, qualified to sit in the Rajya Sabha and not a member of either House. The Chairman votes only to break a tie (Article 100), and the House picks its own Deputy Chairman from among its members. A resolution to remove the Vice-President must start in the Rajya Sabha, pass by a majority of all its members after 14 days’ notice, and be agreed to by the Lok Sabha (Article 67(b)). A quorum is one tenth of the House, 25 of 245 members, according to the Secretariat.

S. Radhakrishnan, the first Vice-President, was the first Chairman, elected unopposed for the term starting 13 May 1952. Replying to congratulations in May 1952, he told the House that “it will depend on our work whether we justify this two chamber system”.