BJP announces list of 16 candidates for Rajya Sabha elections

By Payal Mehta
New Delhi [India], May 29 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday announced the list of 16 candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections which are scheduled to take place on June 10. Polling will be held for 57 seats spread across 15 states.
Among the prominent names, the list includes Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman from Karnataka and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal from Maharashtra who are up for re-election as their terms are set to end.
The BJP has fielded a total of six candidates from Uttar Pradesh where the maximum number of seats (11) are lying vacant, including Laxmikant Vajpayee, Radha Mohan Agarwal, Surendra Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh, and Sangeeta Yadav.
Former Uttar Pradesh BJP president Laxmikant Bajpai will contest against Samajwadi Party leader Surendra Nagar who got a repeat term.
Former MLA from Gorakhpur urban Radhe Mohan Agarwal who gave up his seat for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to contest has been brought to the Rajya Sabha. Baburam Nishad Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav are the other candidates from Uttar Pradesh.
A sitting member of Parliament in Rajya Sabha from Bihar, Satish Chandra Dubey also got a repeat term whereas party worker and OBC face, state secretary Shambhu Sharon Patel will be making his debut in the upper house.
Farmer Leader and former irrigation minister of Maharashtra Dr Anil Sukhdevrao Bonde has been brought to the Rajya Sabha.
Incidentally, Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi who is a member of Parliament in the Upper House from Jharkhand has not found a place on this list.
It can be said that the BJP has decided to field young faces and state leaders and office bearers to the Upper House.
Several senior faces including Rajya Sabha housing committee chairman OP Mathur, BJP general secretary Dushyant Gautam, and Standing committee chairman and ICCR chief Vinay Shaha Strabuddhe have not been repeated. A former minister in the Modi government and the BJP chief in the Rajya Sabha, Shiv Pratap Shukla has also been dropped this time.
Amongst those dropped from Uttar Pradesh for the Rajya Sabha include Sanjay Seth who had jumped ship from the Samajwadi Party and BJP national spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam.
BJP's list includes Ghanshyam Tiwari from Rajasthan, Kalpana Saini from Uttarakhand, Satish Chandra Dubey from Bihar, Shambhu Sharan Patel from Bihar, Krishan Lal Panwar from Haryana, Kavita Patidar from Madhya Pradesh, Jaggesh from Karnataka.