Prabhu to chug into Rajya Sabha on Naidu train

The BJP on Monday announ-ced its nominees for six Rajya Sabha seats, including Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu from Andhra Pradesh, party vice-president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe from Maharashtra and journalist MJ Akbar from Madhya Pradesh.

While there is nothing stopping the victory of Sahastrabuddhe and Akbar, Prabhu’s return to the upper house would depend on the support of TDP. Sahasrabuddhe is the party’s ideologue and a political scholar heading the Public Policy Research Centre in New Delhi. Akbar a longtime editor was sent to Rajya Sabha recently for a short-term from Jharkhand but this time around he is being brought in for a full six-year term from Madhya Pradesh from the seat vacated by Chandan Mitra, Editor, The Pioneer.

The nomination of former state BJP vice-president Shiv Pratap Shukla from the only available slot in Uttar Pradesh has been done keeping the Brahmin votes in the state in mind. The party had recently replaced Laxmikant Bajpai, a Brahmin, as state unit head with Dalit leader Keshav Prasad Maurya.

The party has taken a calculated risk in Jharkhand by nominating state unit treasurer Mahesh Poddar for the second seat, which can be won only if members of state assembly transfer their votes to him. The BJP with 47 votes in the assembly will easily sail through on the one seat where Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has been nominated. Since each candidate needs 28 votes to win, for the second seat BJP has just 19 votes and will need to garner nine more votes.

Others who have been nominated include Vikas Mahatme, a Maharashtra-based ophthalmologist and a prominent representative of the Dhangar or shepherd community in the state. The Dhangar community has been agitating for ST status and party sources said the move to nominate Dr Mahatme was to placate them.