Five Union Ministers — M Venkaiah Naidu, Chaudhary Birender Singh, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Nirmala Sitharaman, Piyush Goyal — figure in the list of 12 candidates announced by the BJP on Sunday for the Rajya Sabha. The list also includes former Rajasthan BJP president and in-charge of Uttar Pradesh Om Prakash Mathur.
Others candidates are ex-Gujarat president and national vice-president Purushottam Rupala, sitting MP Anil Madhav Dave, former Chhattisgarh Minister Ramvichar Netam, former Bihar State president Gopal Narayan Singh, Harshvardhan Singh and Ramkumar Verma.
Elections to the RS seats are to be held on June 11. With May 31 being the last date for filing the nomination, the party is set to announce the names of more candidates soon. Biennial polls are being held for 57 seats and 14 BJP members are retiring. It is expected to win 18-19 seats due to its sizeable strength in States like Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Haryana.
While Naidu, Mathur, Harshvardhan Singh and Verma are nominated from Rajasthan, Birender Singh is from Haryana, Naqvi from Jharkhand, Sitharaman from Karnataka and Goel from Maharashtra. Dave has been nominated from Madhya Pradesh, Rupala from Gujarat, Netam from Chhattisgarh and Gopal Narayan Singh from Bihar.
Interestingly, while Naqvi, who hails from poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, has been shifted to Jharkhand, the party is yet to decide on the name of the candidate from UP.
BJP’s senior leader from Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi’s name was also doing round for the Rajya Sabha seat and so were speculations about party’s vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. The BJP has already fielded one candidate each from Bihar and Maharashtra. BJP’s General Secretary Ram Madhav could also be a candidate for the RS nomination.
The tenure of Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, who hails from Maharashtra, will expire by year end. The term of BJP spokesperson MJ Akbar who was nominated from Jharkhand in a by-poll will conclude by July, this year.
BJP also announced three candidates for State legislative councils ex-Minister B Somanna (Karnataka), Sujit Thakur (Maharashtra) and Arjun Sahni (Bihar).