The BJP’s list of Rajya Sabha candidates is devoid of notable names, including Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
The elections for the upper house will take place on June 10th. In the three lists, the BJP has revealed the names of 22 candidates.
The lists released do not include the names of Union Minority Affairs Minister Naqvi, former Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, party national general secretary Dushyant Gautam, former national vice president Dr. Vinay Sahastrabudhe, former Union Minister Shiv Pratap Shukla, or national spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam.
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According to IANS, Naqvi might run for the Rampur Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, where by-polls are set on June 23. Jharkhand’s Naqvi is a member of the Upper House, and the BJP has nominated Aditya Sahu from the state this time.
Notably, former Congress Minister RPN Singh, who defected from the party to join the BJP before the Uttar Pradesh elections, has been kept off the Rajya Sabha election list.
Singh was the Congress’s Jharkhand in charge before quitting the party, and he was seen as a possible candidate for the party’s Upper House. However, he left Congress due to disagreements over the selection of candidates in his hometown of Padrauna.
The BJP published the names of four additional candidates for the 2018 biennial Rajya Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh late Monday evening, after announcing the names of 18 candidates in two lists on Sunday.
The BJP has nominated Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman of Karnataka and Piyush Goyal of Maharashtra in a Sunday list. In Karnataka, the party set Sitharaman, actor-turned-politician Jaggesh, and Lahar Singh Siroya, while in Madhya Pradesh, Kavita Patidar and Sumitra Valmiki will run.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal, Anil Sukhdevrao Bonde, and Dhananjay Mahadik have been nominated from Maharashtra.
Radhamohan Aggarwal, Surendra Singh Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh, Sangeeta Yadav, Mithlesh Kumar, and Dr. K. Laxman are the candidates from Uttar Pradesh.
The saffron party in Bihar has handed Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel tickets. The candidates are Kalpana Saini of Uttarakhand, Krishan Lal Panwar of Haryana, and Ghanshyam Tiwari of Rajasthan.
On June 10, 15 states will hold biennial elections for 57 Rajya Sabha seats.
