The BJP has announced its list of candidates for the Rajya Sabha bypolls For which nominations will come to an end on August 21, 2024. Out of the 12 seats for which the elections have been announced by the Election Commission of India, the party has released a list of nine candidates.
Out of the remaining three seats, BJP has decided to give one Rajya Sabha to Ajit Pawar lead faction of NCP. NCP Ajit Pawar faction has given the Rajya Sabha seat in its quota to former MLA Nitin Patil who had jumped ship from Shiv Sena to NCP mid this year.
The saffron party has already committed that the second seat which falls vacant from Bihar, would be given to the alliance partner, Upendra Kushwaha. Meanwhile, the BJP for the other seat in Bihar has fielded a Brahmin face by providing a Rajya Sabha nomination to the sitting president of the Bar Council of India, Manan Kumar Mishra.
In the wake of the upcoming Assembly elections in the states, the BJP has strategically given Raja Sabha seats to the states of Maharashtra and Haryana.
Kiran Chaudhary, who jumped ship from the Congress to the BJP just before the Lok Sabha polls, is a Jat leader who comes from the influential Bansilal family in Haryana. The anti-Jat sentiments that have plagued the BJP in the recent Lok Sabha elections is being considered as one of the biggest reasons for Chaudhary to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
In the next two months, elections are going to happen in the state of Maharashtra and during the recent Lok Sabha elections it was witnessed that the BJP lacked in giving confidence to the Maratha voters, who have proven to be the deciding factor in the state. Dhairyashil Patil, BJP Maratha candidate has been nominated by the BJP for the Rajya Sabh bypolls.
The 12th seat for which the BJP has not put up any candidate falls vacant from the state of Telangana, which is to be claimed by the Congress. The grand old party has already announced the nomination of a noted lawyer
Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi from the seat.
A look at the seats that have been declared by the BJP indicates a lot of work and thought process that has gone into the selection of candidates.
A no-brainer has been the nomination of Ravneet Singh Bittu from Rajasthan and George Kurien from Madhya Pradesh. Rajya Sabha nominations for the two ministers have been mandated after they were sworn in as ministers in the Modi 3.0 government. Well, Bittu lost his elections from Ludhiana in 2024, and George Kurien was brought into the government from the southern state of Karnataka.
KC Venugopal was a member of Parliament in the upper house from Rajasthan. He has gone on to win the Lok Sabha seat from Kerala. Apart from this Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is also elected to the Lok Sabha in 2024 vacated his Rajya Sabha seat from his home state Madhya Pradesh.
As far as the two seats from Assam are concerned, the saffron party has fielded Rameshwar Teli. The former minister also comes from the popular tea tribe of the state of Assam, which holds a lot of significance in the political scenario of the state.
Dr Rajdeep Roy, who was the sitting member of Parliament in 2019, did not find a nomination in 2024. The Silchar seat from where he was sitting MP was reserved during the recent delimitation that the state undertook. In fact, one of the noted, Bengali faces of the saffron Party, Roy was Appointed as the incharge of neighbouring state, Tripura. The second Rajya Sabha seat, which is vacated by Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, who is now a member of Parliament, Lok Sabha has been given to Mission Ranjan Das. He is also a very old Karyakarta of the party who has been an MLA in the past as well. Das is also a Bengali.
Mamata Mohanta just a few weeks ago had announced her resignation from the Biju Janata Dal. The sitting member of Parliament had jumped ship to the BJP. She has now been fielded again as the Rajya Sabha bypoll candidate.
The BJP has also fielded its Tripura state president to the Rajya Sabha from the seat that fell vacant after Biplab Deb became a Lok Sabha member of Parliament recently. There was a lot of speculation that the party would give the Rajya Sabha to its woman leader Pratima Bhowmik Who was denied a ticket in the last Lok Sabha elections.
The elections to the 12 Rajya Sabha seats will take place on September 3, 2024. At present, the BJP has 87 sitting members in the upper house, while the Congress on the other hand has 26 seats.
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