In a key political move, BJP national president Nitin Nabin was on Tuesday nominated as the party's candidate from Bihar for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released a list of nine candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls, fielding its former West Bengal unit chief Rahul Sinha and Chhattisgarh unit vice-president Laxmi Verma from the respective states.
Assam PWD minister Jogen Mohan and MLA Terash Gowalla will be the saffron party's candidates for the elections to the Upper House of Parliament from the state. The BJP has also nominated its Odisha unit president, Manmohan Samal, and leader Sujeet Kumar, an incumbent Rajya Sabha MP, as candidates from the state.
BJP leader Shivesh Kumar will join the fray from Bihar and Sanjay Bhatia, a former Lok Sabha MP of the party, will be its candidate from Haryana. Kumar is Bihar BJP's general secretary. The names of the candidates have been approved by the party's central election committee, BJP national general secretary Arun Singh said.
Nabin, who currently holds the Bankipur assembly seat in the state, has been named along with Shivesh Kumar, a former MLA who had unsuccessfully contested the Sasaram Lok Sabha seat in the general elections held two years ago. Nabin, 45, was catapulted to the top party post in January, when he replaced two-term national president and Union minister Jagat Prakash Nadda, in a surprise decision that is said to have signalled the rise of the ‘third generation leadership’ in the BJP.
While the rise to prominence of Nabin, a Kayasth, could also be seen as the BJP's attempt to assure its core base of upper castes that they will get a good share despite being numerically small, the choice of Shivesh Kumar can be seen as part of the party's Dalit outreach. The name of Nabin as a possible candidate from Bihar had been doing the rounds ever since the Rajya Sabha elections were announced a few weeks ago.
Speculations were rife that for the other seat, the party might consider Bhojpuri superstar Pawan Singh, who turned down the BJP ticket in 2024 from the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in West Bengal and contested as an Independent from Karakat in Bihar, thereby spoiling the chances of the NDA candidate there.
Soon after the announcements came from the BJP's national headquarters in Delhi, state BJP president Sanjay Saraogi said, "It is a matter of pride for Bihar that Shri Nitin Nabin will represent his home state in the Rajya Sabha".
"Both Nitin Nabin and Shivesh Kumar will file their nomination papers on March 5. Rashtriya Lok Morcha president Upendra Kushwaha will also file his nomination papers on the same day," added Saraogi.
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