Besides Jyotiraditya Scindia, the BJP named 8 others for the March 26 Rajya Sabha elections to 55 seats across 17 States.
BJP’s alliance partner Janata Dal (United) too announced that it would field Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh and Upper House member Ram Nath Thakur, whose terms end next month, for the upcoming election to the Upper House.
Other candidates named by the BJP included Bhubaneswar Kalita from Assam, Vivek Thakur from Bihar, Udayanraje Bhosale from Maharashtra and Rajendra Gehlot from Rajasthan. Abhay Bhardwaj and Ramilaben Bara from Gujarat, Deepak Prakash from Jharkhand and Leishemba Sanajaoba from Manipur were also named by the party as its Rajya Sabha nominees. Prakash is the State party president.
The BJP also said it has allotted two seats to its allies with Dalit leader and Union Minister Ramdas Athawale getting renominated from Maharashtra and Biswajit Daimary of Bodoland People’s Front to contest from Assam.
Almost all these candidates are certain to enter Rajya Sabha as the BJP has numerical strength in the respective Assembly to ensure their win.
Scindia is an influential leader of Madhya Pradesh where 22 Congress MLAs, 19 of whom loyal to him, have resigned in a bid to topple the Kamal Nath-led Government.
Vivek Thakur is the son of former Union Minister CP Thakur, whose term is ending, the BJP’s decision to field him underscores its bid to keep Bhumihars, a strong support base for the party, in good humour in Bihar where Assembly polls are due later this year.
Bhosale, who traces his lineage to Maratha king Shivaji, had left the NCP to join the BJP before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls but had lost from Satara.
The list does not include the names of Vijay Goel and Prabhat Jha, among the incumbents whose terms will expire next month.
BJP’s Rajasthan vice-president and former Jails Minister Rajendra Gehlot will be the party’s Rajya Sabha candidate from the State.
Bihar’s JD(U) chief, Vashishtha Narayan Singh, made the announcement about the two RS nominees of the party at a Press conference at Patna in the presence of its national general secretary RCP Singh, who is the JD(U)’s leader in the Rajya Sabha.
Elections to five Rajya Sabha seats from the State, which will fall vacant next month, will be held on March 26. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) holds three of these and its alliance partner BJP, the remaining two.
Harivansh is a veteran journalist and was the editor of Prabhat Khabar for many years.
Ram Nath Thakur, besides being from an extremely backward caste, is the son of late Karpoori Thakur, a former Bihar Chief Minister and arguably the tallest OBC leader in the State whom Nitish Kumar and socialists of his generation consider their political mentor.
The JD(U)-BJP coalition’s strength in the Assembly this time, however, is poised to win only three out of these five seats because the Congress-RJD combine, which had fought the 2015 State Assembly polls in alliance with the JD(U), had seen dramatic rise in their tally and are slated to bag two Rajya Sabha seats.