Union Railway Minister and BJP leader Suresh Prabhu will contest Rajya Sabha elections from Andhra Pradesh. The BJP announced his name for the Upper House on Monday after the ruling Telugu Desam Party left one of the four vacant seats of the Upper House to the BJP.

While TDP was sure to win three seats and one of them was being allocated to the BJP, the Opposition YSRCP was comfortably placed to win the remaining seat.

According to sources, a formal decision to leave one seat for Suresh Prabhu was taken at the Telugu Desam Politburo meeting chaired by N Chandrababu Naidu in Tirupati late on Sunday evening.

The TDP supremo continued his confabulations with the senior party leaders, including Union Ministers Ashok Gajapati Raju and Sujana Choudhary before finalising party's nominees for the remaining three seats.

Party sources said that list of TDP candidates is likely to be released by Monday night and the candidates will file their nominations on Tuesday in Hyderabad.

On the two seats , which the TDP was sure to win, the party was likely to nominate Union MoS for Science Sujana Choudhary and a Dalit leader from Guntur JR Pushpa Raj.

YSRCP has already announced that Vijaysai Reddy, the family auditor of Jaganmohan Reddy, will be the party's candidate.

The BJP had moved Union Minister of State Nirmala Sitaraman from Andhra to Karnataka amid speculations that due to serious differences between the two alliance partners over the special category status issue, TDP was unwilling to leave any RS seat to it partner.

Senior BJP leader and Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, who belongs to Andhra and was elected to RS from Karnataka was shifted to Rajasthan this time.