Rajya Sabha elections: BJP names Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw, L Murugan as candidates
The party announced that Union Minister L Murugan will contest from Madhya Pradesh while Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will contest from Odisha.
FollowThe Bharatiya Janata Party has released another list of candidates for the Rajya Sabha Biennial elections. The party announced that Union Minister L Murugan will contest from Madhya Pradesh while Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will contest from Odisha.
Previously, the BJP announced its candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, nominating Chunnilal Garasiya and Madan Rathore from Rajasthan, and RPN Singh from Uttar Pradesh, who had defected from the Congress in 2022. Other nominees from Uttar Pradesh include Sudhanshu Trivedi, Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, Sadhna Singh, Amarpal Maurya, Sangita Balwant, and Navin Jain, filling the state's ten vacancies.
Interestingly, among the nine outgoing BJP MPs from Uttar Pradesh, including Anil Jain, Anil Agrawal, and G V L Narasimha Rao, only Sudhanshu Trivedi was renominated. The list of nominees from Uttar Pradesh represents a diverse array of castes, including Kurmi, Brahmin, Nishad, Jain, Rajput, Maurya, and Jat communities.
In Bihar, where the BJP is allied with Nitish Kumar's JDU, Dharmsheela Gupta and Bhim Singh have been named as candidates for the six Rajya Sabha seats, although Sushil Kumar Modi's name is notably absent.
Raja Devendra Pratap Singh has been nominated in Chhattisgarh, where the BJP seeks to reinforce its recent electoral victory. In Haryana, Subhash Barala, a Jat, will be the party's candidate, while Narayana Krishanasa Bhandage will represent Karnataka. Mahendra Bhatt will stand for election in Uttarakhand, and Samik Bhattacharya in Bengal.
With 115 members in the 200-member assembly, the BJP aims to secure the necessary 67 votes to win each seat. Given the impending general elections in April-May, the party is likely to refrain from naming several ministers whose terms in the Rajya Sabha are ending.
The Election Commission has scheduled the biennial Rajya Sabha polls for February 27, with 58 members set to retire by the first week of May, including prominent figures such as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and BJP chief JP Nadda. The nomination process began on February 8, with the deadline for filing nominations on February 15 and the withdrawal deadline on February 20. Voting will take place from 9 am to 4 pm on the same day as the counting, which will begin from 5 pm onwards.
