Nadda and Ashok Chavan among BJP’s RS candidates

: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday fielded party president J P Nadda from Gujarat for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections and named former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan as its candidate for the Upper House from his home state.

Ashok Chavan had quit the Congress only a day ago to join the BJP but found favour from the Lotus party in entering the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra. The BJP had targeted him for his alleged role in Adarsh housing society scam.

The BJP’s latest list of candidates for the biennial Rajya Sabha polls has seven nominees — four for Gujarat and three for Maharashtra.

Party chief Nadda is currently a Rajya Sabha member from Himachal Pradesh but the BJP does not have the numbers to win the lone seat from the Congress-ruled state.

Union ministers and outgoing Rajya Sabha members Mansukh Mandaviya and Parshottam Rupala, both from Gujarat, and Narayan Rane from Maharashtra have not been renominated amid speculation that they may contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan are BJP’s Rajya Sabha candidates from Odisha and Madhya Pradesh respectively. Both the ministers will get their second term in the Upper House, if elected from these states.

Railway Minister Vaishnaw who had served in Odisha as an IAS officer is likely to get elected with the support of the state’s ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD). In his first term in 2019 too, Vaishnaw was elected with the BJD’s support.

From Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has named three more candidates besides Murugan, the MoS in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, for the five vacancies from the state. The other three names from MP are Umesh Nath Maharaj, Maya Naroliya who is party’s women cell state president and Bansilal Gurjar.

Interestingly, sitting members Dharmendra Pradhan, Ajay Pratap Singh and Kailash Soni are not among the Rajya Sabha candidates of the Lotus party from Madhya Pradesh.