Among the big names, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will contest from Karnataka, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal will contest from Maharashtra.
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday announced its list of 16 candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls slated to be held on June 10. Voting will be held on 57 seats across 15 states. The Rajya Sabha elections will be crucial as they will be held ahead of the Presidential polls in July.
Among the big names, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will contest from Karnataka, Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal will contest from Maharashtra. Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s term is also about to end but he was not named in the list.
BJP has announced the names of two candidates each from Karnataka, Maharashtra and Bihar and one candidate each from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttarakhand.
The BJP has named maximum candidates from Uttar Pradesh — six, including Laxmikant Vajpayee, Radhamohan Aggarwal, Surendra Singh Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav. Among the Rajya Sabha seats that are up for grabs, Uttar Pradesh has the most at 11.
In Maharashtra, six seats will go to polls and other than Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, the BJP has named Anil Bonde from in the list.
The Rajya Sabha polls will also be held on five seats from Bihar, four each from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, three each from Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each from Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Telangana and one seat from Uttarakhand. The BJP has not fielded any candidate in Tamil Nadu yet. Six seats in Tamil Nadu will go to polls.
The other candidates who feature in the BJP’s list are Kavita Patidar, from Madhya Pradesh, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Jaggesh from Karnataka, Ghanshyam Tiwari from Rajasthan, Dr Kalpana Saini from Uttarakhand, Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel from Bihar and Krishan Lal Panwar from Haryana.
