VIJAYAWADA: The YSRC scripted history by grabbing all the 11 Rajya Sabha seats from Andhra Pradesh and zeroing in on the opposition Telugu Desam. Three newly elected RS members took the oath on Thursday. The YSRC emerged as the fourth largest party in the Upper House.This is the first time in 41 years after coming to power in 1983, the Telugu Desam left without representation in the Rajya Sabha.Three newly elected members of the YSRC were sworn in as Rajya Sabha members on Thursday.The oath was administered by vice-president and Rajya Sabha chairman Jagdeep Dhankar to Y.V. Subba Reddy, Golla Babu Rao and Meda Raghunath Reddy.While Subba Reddy and Raghunath took their oath in English, Babu Rao took his oath in Hindi.With the addition of the new members, the total number of YSRC members in the Rajya Sabha now stands at 11, making the YSRC the fourth-largest party in the Rajya Sabha.The BJP holds the top position with 97 members, followed by the Congress with 29 members and Trinamool Congress with 13 members.Before taking his oath, Babu Rao spoke to the media and expressed his gratitude to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy for providing opportunities to Dalits in Parliament.He aims to bring the issues of the poor to the attention of the central government.The Election Commission announced Rajya Sabha elections for three seats in Andhra Pradesh on February 27. While the TD has a strength of 22 MLAs in the Assembly, it will require 44 votes to win the Rajya Sabha seat.Hence, the TD did not field its candidate in the RS elections and the three RS seats went to the YSRC unopposed, registering a clean sweep of 11 RS seats in the past five years. The Telugu Desam is left without any representation in the Rajya Sabha. The YSRC won all three RS seats from AP unanimously. The TD did not field a candidate. The term of the sole RS member, Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar, ended on April 2. This ended the representation and erased the TD’s presence in the Rajya Sabha.The number of Rajya Sabha members in the AP state quota is 11. Before the 2019 elections, the YSRC had two members and TD nine in the Rajya Sabha. In the 2019 elections in the state, the YSRC won 151 legislative seats with 50 per cent votes, while the TD suffered a heavy defeat with only 23 seats. This gave a chance to the YSRC to win RS seats in a phased manner.
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