New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal have been named for Rajya Sabha by the BJP. However, in a surprise move the BJP has not included Union Minority Affairs Minister, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in the list of names announced. Naqvi is in Rajya Sabha as a representative of Jharkhand. Former Union Minister Prakash Javadekar has also been dropped
The BJP is facing some turbulence over its list of 18 candidates for the elections to be held June 10. Polling will be held for 57 seats spread across 15 states. Nirmala Sitharaman is the BJP candidate from Karnataka and Goyal is up for re-election from Maharashtra.
Veterans like OP Mathur, BJP general secretary Dushyant Gautam, and Vinay Sahastrabuddhe have not been repeated. The BJP’s chief whip in Rajya Sabha and former Union Minister Shiv Pratap Shukla is also excluded.
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Sanjay Seth, who switched to the Samajwadi Party before the UP election, and BJP national spokesperson Syed Zafar Islam have also been dropped.
The BJP has named six candidates from Uttar Pradesh, where 11 seats are vacant. They are Laxmikant Bajpai, Radha Mohan Agarwal, Surendra Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav.
Radha Mohan Agrawal, who gave up his Gorakhpur seat for UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to contest in the February-March state election, has been named for Rajya Sabha. The other candidates from UP are Baburam Nishad Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav.
SC Dubey, a Rajya Sabha member from Bihar, has been nominated again. Shambhu Sharon Patel, an OBC (Other Backward Class) leader, is the other candidate from Bihar.
Farmer Leader and Maharashtra Minister, Anil Sukhdevrao Bonde, will also go to the Rajya Sabha.