Rajya Sabha elections: BJP focuses on new faces, OBCs

Tribune News Service

Vibha Sharma

New Delhi, May 30

While Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal have been named by the BJP as candidates for the June 10 biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha, Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi failed to make to the list released by the party late this evening.

The BJP today released a list of four candidates, including Sumitra Valmiki from MP, Lahar Singh Siroya from Karnataka and Mithlesh Kumar and K Laxman from UP, mostly new and fresh faces in the Central BJP politics.

Notably, the last date for filing of nominations for 57 RS seats from 15 states is May 31 and the list today more or less settles the party’s strategy for the upcoming elections.

Yesterday, the party released a list of 18 candidates, including state general secretary Aditya Sahu from Jharkhand, the state from where Naqvi is the RS member.

Several leaders, including Naqvi, Syed Zafar Islam, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and general secretary Dushyant Gautam are retiring from the Rajya Sabha. Apart from known names like Sitharaman from Karnataka and Goyal from Maharashtra, several BJP candidates are “fresh faces” belonging to the OBC category. Some are also from the state organisation as the party wants to “reward those who work hard at the grassroots,” the sources said.

As far as Naqvi is concerned, the buzz is he may be fielded from the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency, which was recently vacated by SP leader Azam Khan after he was elected to the Vidhan Sabha in the recent UP elections.

Another speculation is that the senior BJP leader from the minority community may be appointed “a Governor or brought in the party organisation at some higher level”.

The BJP has named eight candidates from UP, including Laxmikant Bajpai, Radha Mohan Agarwal, Surendra Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh, and Sangeeta Yadav. The party may field another candidate from Haryana where two seats are falling vacant. Sitting MP in the RS from Bihar Satish Chandra Dubey got a repeat term, whereas party worker and OBC face Shambhu Sharon Patel is the second candidate from the state.

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