Rajya Sabha will on Thursday bid farewell to the retiring members of the Upper House of Parliament. It is reported that M Venkaiah Naidu, the Rajya Sabha chairman, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union minister Piyush Goyal, who is also the leader of the House, and Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge will be among those who will speak on the occasion.

On Wednesday, Naidu announced that Zero and Question hours will not be taken up on Thursday to enable the leaders to speak.

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Five ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and six Congress members will be among the 19 members to retire in April. The retirements will bring down the Congress’s tally to 28 from 34. The BJP’s tally will come down from 97 to 92.

BJP is the single largest party in the 245-member Upper House, which presently has 237 members.

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Naidu will also host a dinner for Rajya Sabha members at his residence.

Meanwhile, five AAP nominees from Punjab were elected unopposed last week. The focus is now on five states – Assam, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura – where the Rajya Sabha elections for eight seats will be held on Thursday.

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While two candidates are to be elected from Assam, three will be picked from Kerala, and Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura will elect one member of parliament each.

The Rajya sabha polls come about three weeks after the results for the assembly elections for Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Goa and Punjab were announced where the BJP won four of five states and the AAP won Punjab.