Puri, Verma left out as BJP names eight from UP for Rajya Sabha polls

Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and Minister of State BL Verma are not among the eight names the BJP announced for the upcoming Rajya Sabha (RS) election from Uttar Pradesh,, suggesting they may be dropped from the Council of Ministers sooner or later. Earlier, George Kurian and Ravneet Singh Bittu were not re-nominated to the Upper House of the Parliament, taking the total number of ministers on their way out to four. Former Union minister Smriti Irani, who recently returned to the party organisation, former AAP leader Kumar Viswas, and sitting Rajya Sabha MP Neeraj Shekhar Singh also do not figure in the list.

Ten seats in the State are up for election on October 16. Based on the parties’ strength in the Assembly, the BJP is expected to win eight seats and the Samajwadi Party two. The BJP is certain to win seven seats and is pushing for an eighth. Samajwadi Party, which has already named two candidates, is likely to field a third, sources have indicated.

The BJP list for RS candidates from UP has tried to balance caste equations with an eye on the 2027 Assembly polls. The list includes UP State minister Dharampal Singh, lawyer Radhakant Ojha, State OBC Morcha president Prakash Pal, former MP Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, former MP Priyanka Singh Rawat, State general secretary Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan, and Shruti Gangwar, the daughter of Jharkhand Governor Santosh Gangwar. The list combines three OBC candidates, two Scheduled Caste candidates and three upper-caste candidates. Two nominees are women.

Pal, who belongs to the OBC Pal community, has previously headed BJP’s Kanpur-Bundelkhand organisational region. Sonkar, a Dalit leader from Jaunpur, is a former MP and MLC. 

He has served as deputy leader in the UP Legislative Council and as a BJP state general secretary. Former MP Priyanka Singh Rawat won the Barabanki Lok Sabha seat in 2014, defeating Congress veteran PL Punia. Gangwar, an IIT graduate, chairs the Urban Co-operative Bank in Bareilly and is active in the Bareilly-Baheri region.

Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan, a BJP State general secretary and the party’s western UP in-charge, has represented Etmadpur in Agra as an MLA from 2017 to 2022. Radhakant Ojha is a senior advocate at the Allahabad High Court and has been elected president of its Bar Association twice. Gopi Krishna Pandey is a senior BJP organiser involved in grassroots campaigns and organisational work.

Elections to 12 Rajya Sabha seats across UP, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will be held on October 16. These include 10 seats from UP and one from Uttarakhand, along with a bypoll to one seat from West Bengal. The terms of the sitting members from UP and Uttarakhand end on November 25.

The retiring members from Uttar Pradesh include Union minister Hardeep Puri, Arun Singh, Brijlal, BL Verma, Ram Gopal Yadav, Neeraj Shekhar, Geeta alias Chandraprabha, Ramji, Seema and Dinesh Sharma. Naresh Bansal is the lone retiring member from Uttarakhand. Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party has named Professor Ramgopal Yadav and Dhanraj Parimal Nathwani as its two Rajya Sabha candidates from UP.