Samajwadi Party decided to field Jaya Bachchan as their Rajya Sabha candidate

Samajwadi Party has decided to field Jaya Bachchan as their Rajya Sabha candidate from Uttar Pradesh. Her third term in the Upper House will come to an end on April 3. 

Samajwadi Party sources said that 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 were 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 Agrawal."

Earlier there were speculations that Jaya Bachchan 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).

Bachchan was first elected to Rajya Sabha in 2004 as a Samajwadi Party 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 Rajya Sabha.