NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday released its first list of 16 candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, with Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal being the most prominent faces to be fielded.
Interestingly, the names of BJP lone Muslim face and Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, and party general secretary Dushyanat Gautam, who was a member of the Upper House from Haryana, were missing in the first list of candidates. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe was another prominent name that did not figure in the list released on Sunday.
Of the 16 candidates announced, six are from Uttar Pradesh — Laxaminkant Vajpayee, Radhamohan Aggarwal, Surendra Singh Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh and Sangita Yadav. Aggarwal had left his Gorakhpur Urban constituency for Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to contest in the recent assembly polls.
The party has fielded former MLA Krishna Lal Panwar from Haryana and Kavita Patidar from MP. Actor-turned-politician Jaggesh is the second person nominated by the party from Karnataka. Apart from Goyal, Anil Deshmukha Bonde will be the second nominee from Maharashtra while Ghanshayam Tewari has been field from Rajasthan. Interestingly, Tiwari is a vocal critic of former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who has an uneasy equation with the BJP’s central leadership.
Kalpana Saini has been given the ticket from Uttarakhand and Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel from Bihar. Sources said the second list of candidatures will also be announced on Monday.
The BJP has tried to maintain social balance with members from all castes, including OBC, SC and ST, being given tickets in the first list.
Shambhu Patel, who is the nominee from Bihar, belongs to extremely backward caste Dhanuk while another nominee from the state, Satish Chandra Dubey, is a Brahmin. The last date for filing of nominations is May 31. The last date for withdrawal of candidature is June 3.
UP has the biggest tally
UP sends 31 members to Rajya Sabha. Among the 11 retiring MPs from the state, five are from the BJP, three from the SP, two from the BSP and one from the Congress.
