2024: The year that tested incumbents around the world

Apart from Assembly polls in Delhi and Bihar, 2025 could also see the long pending election to the country's wealthiest civic body, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

- ARCHIS MOHAN

Last year had elections to 84 Rajya Sabha's seats, which is a little more than a third of its total 245 members, and the results helped the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) inch closer to the halfway mark in the Upper House.

However, the NDA's numbers in Parliament, in either of its two Houses, are insufficient to ensure the passage of two key Bills currently under the scrutiny of separate parliamentary joint committees - the Waqf Amendment Bill and the 129th Constitution Amendment Bill, which envisages conducting simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha and legislative assemblies.

The two committees are expected to turn in their reports over the course of the year, and in 5 neither case can the government push through the proposed original Bill without relenting on some of the changes that the Opposition . has demanded. The Rajya Sabha s will see eight vacancies over the course of the year, two from Assam and six from Tamil Nadu, which - would not be enough to change the numbers in the BJP's favour.