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Journalism of Courage
The Rajya Sabha elections on February 27 may not change the BJP’s tally in the Upper House, but its look will be starkly different. Among the 28 names announced by the party – the same as the number of seats held by it currently – 24 are new, with only four repeated.
A total of 56 seats are falling vacant in this round of the biennial elections. The BJP can win 27 seats as per its numbers, plus 1 more with the help of the BJD in Odisha.
The four BJP leaders set to return to the Rajya Sabha include party president J P Nadda (an MP from Congress-ruled Himachal Pradesh, who has been nominated from Gujarat); senior minister Ashwini Vaishnaw (named from Odisha, where he will again need the ruling BJD’s support like last time); Union minister L Murugan (renominated from Madhya Pradesh); and senior BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi (Uttar Pradesh), whose name had been announced earlier.
The BJP top leadership had made it clear earlier that it wanted senior names who had served several terms in the Rajya Sabha to contest the Lok Sabha elections. After the announcement of names on Wednesday, it is more or less clear that Union ministers Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan, Mansukh Mandaviya, Narayan Rane, Parshottam Rupala, V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrasekhar will have to take the Lok Sabha route back to Parliament – unless they are moved to the organisation side.
The other Rajya Sabha MPs who haven’t received a renomination include BJP national media head Anil Baluni, BJP national vice-president Saroj Pandey, and former Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.
Addressing NDA MPs in August, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that every Rajya Sabha MP should contest at least one election, so as to get a “feel” of the polls.
Sources said Modi also intends the Rajya Sabha MPs being put in the Lok Sabha battle to emerge as new political faces of the party in those states – be it Pradhan in Odisha, Muraleedharan in Kerala; Chandrasekhar in either Kerala or Karnataka; Mandaviya and Rupala in Gujarat; and Bhupender Yadav in either Rajasthan or Haryana.
While Odisha is one state where the BJP sees immense potential to grow once BJD supremo Naveen Patnaik is out of the picture, in Kerala, it has been trying to make a breakthrough. Chandrasekhar, as Minister of State, Electronics and Information Technology, has emerged as a tech-savvy face of the BJP, fitting the template for both Kerala and Karnataka (he is a Malayali based in Bengaluru).
In Gujarat, the BJP wants to develop a strong second rung after Modi and Amit Shah have moved to the Centre, while in Rajasthan, it has been trying to grow out of Vasundhara Raje’s shadow. In Haryana, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar is still seen as a party man rather than a leader in his own right, as opposed to several titans in the Opposition ranks.
BJP sources said that Rajya Sabha MPs who find themselves contesting the general elections this time would be fielded from “safe seats”. Rupala’s name is doing the rounds for Amreli or Rajkot; Mandaviya’s for Bhavnagar or Porbandar or Surat; Bhupendra Yadav’s for either Alwar in Rajasthan or Bhiwani–Mahendragarh in Haryana; Saroj Pandey’s from Korba in Chhattisgarh; Baluni’s for Pauri Garhwal; and Muraleedharan from Attingal in Kerala.
Sources said the top leadership is making an exception for those senior ministers in the Rajya Sabha who are holding hectic portfolios, which might be a distraction for them in a Lok Sabha campaign. Hence, the Rajya Sabha nod for Vaishnaw, who holds the Railways and IT portfolios. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar may not be asked to contest Lok Sabha polls either.
The distribution of Rajya Sabha tickets is also a reaffirmation of the strategy the BJP adopted in the recent Hindi heartland states – where it performed spectacularly – of rewarding those who have worked hard and long for the party.
Of the 28 candidates, five are women while the caste balance has also been kept in mind.
Apart from a new-look Rajya Sabha brigade, the BJP has effectively signalled that its Lok Sabha ranks too will have a number of fresh faces. This, though, will be done keeping winnability in mind, sources said, given Modi’s target of 370 seats for the BJP.
“Modiji’s new government also will be full of new faces,” predicted a senior party leader.
As per sources, one of those faces could be Nadda, whose second term as party president ends in June.
Among the “outsiders” whom the BJP has given Rajya Sabha tickets include former Congress leader R P N Singh, who joined the BJP in January 2022 and has been waiting to be accommodated since. His name figured in the first list released by the BJP earlier this week.
Former Maharashtra chief minister and senior Congress leader Ashok Chavan, who joined the BJP only on Tuesday, has also got a Rajya Sabha nomination. “It shows the BJP’s wariness about alienating the sentiments of a prominent community (Marathas) on the eve of elections in the key state,” said a party leader from Maharashtra.
Sources said the BJP’s first list for the Lok Sabha may be released in the next few days once the senior leadership holds meetings.
with inputs from ENS
