Jaitley to fight RS polls from UP, Pradhan MP, Nadda HP

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will contest the Rajya Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh, while Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan  would seek entry to the Upper House from Madhya Pradesh.

Jaitley is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat and Pradhan represents Bihar in the House.

The BJP on  Wednesday  announced the names of seven Union Ministers and one general secretary for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in various States.

The others — apart from Jaitley and Pradhan —  will contest from the same States they have been elected from.

Social Justice Minister Thawarchand Gehlot will contest from Madhya Pradesh, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Bihar and J P Nadda from Himachal Pradesh, the party said in a statement.

The other two Union Ministers, Parshottam Rupala and Manusukh Mandaviya, will contest from Gujarat.

Bhupender Yadav, the party’s general secretary, will again contest from Rajasthan. Given the numbers BJP has in these respective States, all leaders are set to be re-elected, next month.

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party has decided to field Jaya Bachchan as its Rajya Sabha candidate from Uttar Pradesh. Her third term in the Upper House will come to an end on April 3. SP sources said party chief Akhilesh Yadav decided on the candidature of Bacchan and a formal announcement was likely to be made soon. The voting for Rajya Sabha seats in UP will be held on March 23.

Two other SP members of Rajya Sabha, Naresh Agarwal and Kironmay Nanda retiring on April 2, are also in the race.  A SP leader said, “Jaya Bachcan was consistently loyal to the SP, its system and hierarchy and she has proved to be better a politician than Agarwal.”

Earlier there were speculations that Jaya could be the Rajya Sabha nominee of Mamata Banerjee led Trinmool from West Bengal.

The MPs from UP whose term will come to an end on April 2 are Naresh Agarwal, Jaya Bachchan, Kiranmay Nanda, Chaudhary Munawwar Saleem, Alok Tiwari and Darshan Singh Yadav (all SP), Munqad Ali (BSP), Pramod Tiwari (Congress) and Vinay Katiyar (BJP).

Jaya was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 2004 as a SP candidate. She was elected for the second term in June 2006 and then in 2012 for the third term. With its depleted strength of 47 MLAs in the UP Assembly, the SP can get only one member elected to the RS.