24 of 28 new faces, BJP goes in for Rajya Sabha overhaul, signals what’s coming for LS polls

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