Elections to fill the 16 vacant seats in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament, will take place on Friday.

As many as 41 candidates have been elected unopposed leaving the election to be over 16 seats in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Haryana.

It is being seen as crucial ahead of the impending Presidential elections in July.

A total of 57 vacant seats were spread across 15 states, of which, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) held 23 seats, while the Congress held eight. The remaining seats were divided between other political parties.

As things stand, the toughest contests are set to take place in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, which are opposition-ruled. Both sides have resorted to corral their MLAs in these states to prevent poaching.

It may be noted that Uttar Pradesh has the maximum of 11 seats, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu with six seats each.

Moreover, five seats are from Bihar, while Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh had four vacant seats each and Madhya Pradesh and Odisha had three each.

Besides, Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Telangana had two seats each and one seat from Uttarakhand was vacant.

Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal, Congress’ Randeep Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh and Mukul Wasnik, and Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut are the prominent names that will come up in the polls.

Meanwhile, in Maharashtra, where Rajya Sabha polls are taking place after two decades, the ruling alliance of Shiv Sena, Congress and Sharad Pawar led NCP has been left in a fix after its arrested MLAs were not granted bail for voting.

The ruling party BJP became the first party since 1990 to cross the 100-mark in the upper house and will expect the elections to help shore up its numbers ahead of the Presidential polls.