Jaipur: The BJP on Thursday announced Satish Poonia and Alka Gurjar as two of its three candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections from Rajasthan.
Poonia is currently the party’s Haryana in-charge and a former Rajasthan BJP president, while Gurjar is a national secretary of the party.
Elections for the three Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan will be held on June 18. The results will be declared the same day.
The list has come barely hours after Bittu expressed a desire to work in Punjab, having spent nearly 17 years in Parliament. He said he wanted to contest the Assembly elections in the state.
The Tribune had reported earlier that after a revamp of the BJP organisation, which began with the appointment of new presidents in states, including Punjab and Delhi, recently, a Union Cabinet reshuffle could be on the cards.
Lack of renominations for Bittu and Kurian means they may be moved from the Council of Ministers to the organisation. Bittu is likely to be drafted for a role in the Punjab elections.
In Rajasthan and MP, where the BJP expects to win two seats each out of the three going to the polls, the party has named both candidates.
Alka Gurjar and Satish Poonia have been named from Rajasthan. Senior BJP hands Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Agrawal are BJP nominees from MP. Chugh’s nomination is significant on the eve of the Punjab elections, as he is a senior Hindu face of the party in the state.
From Odisha, the BJP has named Debashish Samantaray, who recently quit the Biju Janata Dal for the BJP.
The party has nominated A Sharda Devi from the lone seat it hopes to win in Manipur, and all four candidates for the four seats due for elections in Gujarat.
Tai Tagak has been nominated from Arunachal Pradesh.
The Election Commission had on May 22 announced the elections for 26 Rajya Sabha seats on June 18. Among the outgoing MPs are former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh and Shakti Sinh Gohil and NCP’s Sunetra Pawar.
Elections are due for four seats each in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, three seats each in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, two seats in Jharkhand and one seat each in Manipur, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. One seat each will go to the polls in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Of these 26 seats, the NDA currently has 18, the Congress has four, the YSRCP three and the JMM one.
