5 minutes reading time
Democracy has a front door. You stand for election. The people vote. If you win, you go in. If you lose, you go home.
The Rajya Sabha is the back door. Around the side. Past the garbage bins. Through the kitchen. Used by people who couldn't get through the front.
I am not being unfair. I am being accurate.
Here is how you get into the Rajya Sabha.
You don't need to win a public election. You don't need a single ordinary voter to choose you. You need the Members of the Legislative Assembly in a particular state to vote for you. That's it. The electorate is reduced to a few hundred politicians in a state assembly hall.
The voting method is called Single Transferable Vote, which on paper sounds sophisticated. In practice, it's an open ballot. The MLAs mark their preferences and hand them in. The party knows exactly how each MLA voted. And because of the Anti-Defection Law, the MLA knows that if they vote the wrong way, their seat in the assembly is forfeit.
So the Rajya Sabha seat goes to whoever the party decides it goes to. The MLAs are just pencils that the party boss picks up and puts down.
Now. Given that the seat is basically a party gift to bestow, what kind of person ends up receiving it?
A politician who just lost the Lok Sabha election. The party needs somewhere to put him. Rajya Sabha.
A businessman who has been funding the party for a decade and wants a title. Rajya Sabha.
A film star who is sympathetic to the party and adds glamour to the brand. Rajya Sabha.
A loyal party worker from the wrong caste to win a direct election in any constituency. Rajya Sabha.
A family member of someone important who isn't quite ready for Lok Sabha yet but needs to be kept warm. Rajya Sabha.
The 12 President-nominated seats — supposed to be for distinguished artists, scientists, jurists, social workers — have over the decades been gifted to former bureaucrats who did favours for the ruling party, cricketers who said nice things about the government, and journalists who learned the art of asking no difficult questions.
This is not conspiracy. This is public record. The names are known. The trajectories are documented.
Let's talk about what the Mistral file calls "financial influence." It's a polite phrase. Let me use a less polite one: buying the seat.
An MLA who is not completely dependent on the party whip — perhaps an independent MLA, or a member of a small regional party with no national alignment — has a vote that is theoretically free. That vote, in a close Rajya Sabha election, is worth something.
What it is worth depends on the seat. A Rajya Sabha seat gives you immunity from ordinary prosecution while in session, access to government machinery, the ability to ask questions and raise issues in Parliament, and above all the prestige of being an "MP." It is worth considerable money to certain kinds of people.
There is a reason that Rajya Sabha seats in states with fragmented legislatures and many independent MLAs are the ones that generate the most colorful post-election stories. Specific amounts don't always end up in print. But everyone in the state capital knows the going rate. It is an open secret that the whole political class maintains by looking in a different direction simultaneously.
The Mistral research mentions a few. Nitin Nabin, elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar without any meaningful record of direct electoral accountability. Sanjay Seth from UP, with questions about financial influence in his election. Maya Naroliya from Madhya Pradesh, a product of straight party patronage.
These aren't exceptions that prove the rule. They are the rule, appearing at a rate too high to be accidental.
The 2014 Rajya Sabha elections saw the Election Commission itself issuing warnings about suspected horse-trading and the Rajasthan High Court intervening in one disputed election. This is the Council of States. This is India's revising chamber. This is the institution constitutionally mandated to be the sober, experienced check on Lok Sabha populism.
I keep looking back at that earlier note on the shield. The Rajya Sabha was supposed to be the thing that protects Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka when the Lok Sabha — rigged by FPTP and now about to be rigged further by the 2026 delimitation — becomes an instrument of northern majority rule.
But if the seats in the Rajya Sabha are parceled out by party bosses based on loyalty, money, and strategic calculation — and not by any democratic accountability to the actual voters of any state — then the "Council of States" is not a council of states at all.
It is a council of party debts.
The back door is always busier than the front in Indian politics. You just have to know which bins to step over on the way in.
The question is: does the solution lie in closing the back door, or in redesigning the entire building?
The question is: does the solution lie in closing the back door, or in redesigning the entire building? I’ve been sketching out some ideas. They’re probably too radical for anyone in power to touch, but I need to get them out of my head.