BJP may go for a young list of candidates in the Lok Sabha 2024 elections with many of its prominent Rajya sabha MPs would be asked to get elected to the Lower House.
While retiring some of the leaders crossing the age-bar or elected two to three times to the Upper House, others may be fielded in the Lok Sabha Parliamentary polls which are barely six-months away. The BJP with 92 Rajya Sabha MPs has 18 of them with more than one term in the Upper House.
According to sources, RS berth will be increasingly offered to people who have distinguished themselves in a “specialized field” like law, economics, science, medicine, environment or art.
Some of the top Union Ministers like Ashwini Vaishanaw and Dharmendra Pradhan who are members of the Upper house have already said that they might be contesting the Lok Sabha polls.
In a signal to the BJP leaders that they must take plunge in the electoral politics Prime Minister Narendra Modi had , during the meeting of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in July, sought that Rajya Sabha members should contest at least one direct election, even if it were to be a civic election.
The list of BJP leaders having served more than one Rajya Sabha term includes Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav, Piyush Goyal, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Hardeep Singh Puri. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2019, was re-elected for a second term in July.
Puri had contested Lok Sabha poll from Amritsar but lost his election.
The Central leadership of the party is also contemplating another generational change by giving ticket to 150 new faces in 2024 Lok Sabha polls, sources said..
Given that over 60 percent population in the country comprise youth, the next poll may witness greater representation to those in the age group ranging from 40 to 55 age group, they said.
BJP MPs like Maneka Gandhi and Santosh Gangwar from Uttar Pradesh have been elected to the Lok Sabha for record eight times. It may be an end of the road for MPs above the age of 75. Actress-turned-politicians Hema Malini, 74, (from UP), may also be axed from the LS list-2024 .