Samajwadi Party, on Tuesday, announced the names of Ramjilal Suman, Jaya Bachchan and retired IAS officer and former chief secretary Alok Ranjan as its candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.
While actor-turned-politician Jaya Bachchan is being fielded again for the fifth consecutive term in Rajya Sabha, this is the first time for Alok Ranjan.
“Suman, Bachchan and Ranjan are SP candidates for Rajya Sabha. They will be filing nominations today,” SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said.
The three SP candidates filed their nomination papers here on Tuesday in the presence of the party president Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Singh Yadav.
The SP, with its increased strength in the Uttar Pradesh assembly, from 47 in 2017 to 108 at present, is now in a position to send three members to the Rajya Sabha. The party has 108 MLAs and the INDIA bloc partner Congress has two MLAs. A candidate needs 37 first preference votes to secure a seat in the Rajya Sabha and therefore, the SP would be able to send three members to the Upper House of Parliament.
Asked about the choice of the candidates fielded for the Rajya Sabha elections, SP spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said that Ramjilal Suman belongs to the Dalit community while Jaya Bachchan belongs to a prominent family of the country.
Meanwhile, four of the seven Rajya Sabha candidates from Uttar Pradesh announced by the Bharatiya Janata Party belong to Backward Class as the party seeks to reach out to various communities ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP announced the candidature of former Union minister RPN Singh (Sainthwar-Kurmi), former MP Chaudhary Tejveer Singh (Jat), party’s state general secretary Amarpal Maurya (Koeri) and former state minister Sangeeta Balwant (Bind). It also fielded party spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi, former MLA Sadhna Singh and former Agra mayor Naveen Jain, belonging to Brahmin, Kshatriya and Jain communities, respectively.
Uttar Pradesh will have the highest number of Rajya Sabha vacancies (10 seats), followed by Maharashtra and Bihar (six each), Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (five each), Karnataka and Gujarat (four each), Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan (three each), and Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Chhattisgarh (one each).
Elections for 56 Rajya Sabha seats spread across 15 states are scheduled to be held on February 27, and the last date for filing nominations is February 15. The polling, if required, will be held on February 27 and the results will be announced on the same day.