Daijiworld Media Network - Lucknow
Lucknow, Oct 5: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday announced eight candidates for the biennial Rajya Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, seeking to balance caste representation with organisational experience.
The list includes two women candidates, reflecting the party’s emphasis on women’s empowerment and women-led development.
However, Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is conspicuously absent from the list. Another Union Minister, BL Verma, along with all other sitting Rajya Sabha MPs from the state, has also been left out of the nominations.
The terms of Puri and Verma in the Upper House are set to end next month.
Other sitting Rajya Sabha MPs who have not been renominated include Arun Singh, Seema Dwivedi, Neeraj Shekhar, Brij Lal and Geeta Shakya. Dinesh Sharma, who previously represented Uttar Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha, was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
For the October 16 biennial elections, the BJP has nominated Dharampal Singh, Radhakant Ojha, Prakash Pal, Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, Priyanka Singh Rawat, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Shruti Gangwar.
The BJP’s list comprises three OBC candidates, two Scheduled Caste candidates and three upper-caste candidates.
Dharampal Singh, BJP MLA from Aonla in Bareilly district, is a prominent face from the Lodh community, which has a significant presence in the Bundelkhand region. He has served as a minister twice in the Yogi Adityanath government.
Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan is the state BJP general secretary and has been overseeing several key party campaigns in Uttar Pradesh.
The OBC nominees represent the Lodhi, Pal and Kurmi communities, while the upper-caste candidates include two Brahmins and one Rajput.
The two women candidates are Shruti Gangwar, daughter of Jharkhand Governor Santosh Gangwar, and former Barabanki MP Priyanka Singh Rawat, who won the Lok Sabha seat in 2014 by defeating Congress veteran PL Punia.
The caste combination in the nominations also comes against the backdrop of the high-stakes Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections scheduled for next year.