PremiumThe elections are being held to fill 57 Rajya Sabha seats from 15 states that will be falling vacant due to the retirement of members on different dates between June and August
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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday appointed Union ministers in-charge for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in four states.
While Narendra Singh Tomar was made in-charge for Rajasthan, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat got Haryana. The party also appointed Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in-charge for Maharashtra and G Kishan Reddy has been appointed in-charge for the polls in Karnataka.
This comes a day after Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP's OBC Morcha chief K Laxman, Congress leaders Randeep Singh Surjewala, Ajay Maken and Rajeev Shukla and media baron Subhas Chandra filed their nominations for the polls.
The BJP has so far announced 22 candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls and will support one Independent candidate each from Rajasthan (Chandra) and Haryana (media honcho Kartikeya Sharma).
The saffron party has fielded eight candidates from Uttar Pradesh, three each from Maharashtra and Karnataka, two each from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, and one each from Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Haryana.
Though the party's list of Rajya Sabha candidates includes the names of Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, some other prominent names such as that of minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and senior leaders Vinay Sahasrabuddhe and OP Mathur are missing.
Senior BJP leader and former cabinet minister Prakash Javadekar's name was earlier wrongly mentioned among those missing from the list. His current Rajya Sabha tenure is till 2024.
The elections are being held to fill 57 Rajya Sabha seats from 15 states that will be falling vacant due to the retirement of members on different dates between June and August.
While 11 seats are falling vacant in Uttar Pradesh, six members each are retiring from Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, five from Bihar and four each from Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka. Three members each from Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each from Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Punjab Jharkhand and Haryana, and one from Uttarakhand are also retiring.