The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday named four Other Backward Classes (OBC) leaders among its seven candidates for the February 27 Rajya Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh while dropping eight outgoing members of the Upper House of Parliament from the state. The list also has two upper castes and a member of the Jain community.
National spokesman Sudhanshu Trivedi is the only one of the nine Rajya Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh being renominated by the BJP
The eight BJP members from U.P. not fielded this time are: Vijay Pal Tomar, who has been named election in-charge for Odisha, former Samajwadi Party heavyweight-turned-BJP MP Ashok Bajpai, Dalit leader from west U.P. Kanta Kardam, party’s OBC leader Sakaldeep Rajbhar, national spokesman GVL Narasimha Rao, veteran leader Anil Jain, businessman from west U.P. Anil Agarwal and senior leader Harnath Singh Yadav who recently demanded that the Places of Worship Act 1991 be scrapped immediately.
The polls have been necessitated as the term of 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, including nine from the BJP, is set to expire on April 2.
Read more: BJP releases candidate list for Rajya Sabha election
The BJP list names former Congress leader RPN Singh, a three-term OBC (Sainthwar) lawmaker from Padrauna, who made a political switch to BJP in 2022. It also includes two women. One of them is Sadhna Singh, a former lawmaker who courted controversy due to a remark directed at Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. Former Agra mayor and businessman Navin Jain is also on the list. The other names include Amarpal Maurya, another OBC leader and BJP’s UP general secretary, who is close to deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
Chaudhari Tejveer Singh, a three-time Jat MP from Mathura is also among the party picks. The other woman on the BJP list is Sangeeta Balwant, former lawmaker who hails from Ghazipur. She is also an OBC (Bind).
“Like always, the BJP list is full of surprises. But like always the party must have done its homework well. Take RPN Singh for instance. He is a former Congress leader but also notice that his Sainthwar OBC caste is spread out in several districts of east UP like Kushinagar, Gorakhpur, Deoria and Maharajganj,” a party leader said.
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Commenting on the BJP again reposing faith in Sudhanshu Trivedi, a party leader said, “He is a Brahmin from UP and also defends the party excellently, so in his case it is a reward of merit.” Trivedi is close to defence minister and Lucknow MP Rajnath Singh.
“Though there will be 10 Rajya Sabha vacancies, the BJP has fielded just seven just about as much as the party’s assembly strength can hold. Unless there are additional names declared, it would seem that BJP won’t spring any surprises in this Rajya Sabha poll as it hasn’t put up any additional candidate,” a BJP leader said.