Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 5: A Central cabinet rejig may be in the offing after the release of the BJP candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh that found the name of the union minister for petroleum and natural gas Hardeep Singh Puri missing.
The names of the union minister of state BL Verma and that of the former minister Smriti Irani, who has recently been rehabilitated in the party as one of the national general secretaries and was expected to be fielded for the upper house from UP, are also missing from the list.
The candidates named today include minister of state Dharampal Singh, lawyer Radhakant Ojha, State OBC Morcha president Prakash Pal, former MP Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, former MP Priyanka Singh Rawat, state General Secretary Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Jharkhand Governor Santosh Gangwar’s daughter Shruti Gangwar.
Ten seats in the state are up for election on October 16. The BJP is certain to win seven seats, and is pushing for an eighth. The Samajwadi Party, which is certain to get two seats and has already named both the candidates, is likely to field a third, sources have indicated.
All eight candidates will file their nomination in Lucknow at 11.30 am tomorrow. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and state party chief Pankaj Chaudhary will be present on the occasion. “Heartfelt congratulations to all the esteemed candidates announced today. Infinite best wishes for the historic victory of each one of you,” Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said in a post on X.
Keeping the coming assembly polls in mind, the BJP has done a balancing act between the state’s key castes and communities. It has fielded three candidates from the OBC category, 3 from General section and two from the Scheduled Castes. The general category list include two Brahmins and one Rajput.
The Rajya Sabha elections for 10 seats from UP are scheduled to be held on October 16. The BJP is in a position to win at least seven seats from the State based on its strength in the state Assembly. The Samajwadi Party (SP) has filed two candidates till now, and is likely to contest the third seat.
The BJP had been considering several names for the eight seats, with former Union Ministers and senior party leaders among those discussed in the run-up to the announcement. Surprisingly, Mr Hardeep Singh Puri and Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs Banwari Lal Verma — who are members of the Rajya Sabha — have been dropped by the BJP.
Senior leader Arun Singh, who was BJP’s former national general secretary, has also been dropped by the party. Geeta Shakya, Seema Dwivedi and former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s son Neeraj Shekhar — all members of the Upper House — have also failed to receive a ticket from the party.
Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) has already declared that it would field three candidates. The SP has strength to get two of its leaders elected, but sources said the party was banking on cross-voting by some NDA MLAs to win three seats. “We will get all three of our candidates elected through the same route by which the BJP had got its candidates elected in the last Rajya Sabha elections,” SP’s Chandauli MP Virendra Singh had said.