The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released the list of candidates for the Rajya Sabha by-election 2024. This list includes the names of candidates for 9 Rajya Sabha seats from 8 states. Kiran Chaudhary from Haryana and Union Minister Ravneet Bittu from Rajasthan have been made candidates.
Voting for 12 Rajya Sabha seats will be held on 3 September 2024. The Election Commission has announced the schedule for this. After this, BJP announced the candidates. The party issued a press release saying that the Central Election Committee has approved the names for these by-elections.
BJP has announced its candidates from different states:
Ravneet Singh Bittu has earlier contested the Lok Sabha elections from Punjab, but after losing there, he has now been made a candidate for the Rajya Sabha. Bittu took oath as a minister after the Modi government was formed for the third time at the Centre.
Maharashtra, Bihar, and Assam have 2 vacant seats each, while Tripura, Haryana, Rajasthan, Odisha, Telangana, and Madhya Pradesh have 1 vacant seat each. Out of these 12 seats, 10 seats fell vacant after MPs contested Lok Sabha elections. In Odisha and Telangana, Rajya Sabha members left one party and joined another and resigned from Rajya Sabha membership.
In Odisha, BJD MP Mamta Mohanta left Naveen Patnaik and joined BJP, so she resigned from Rajya Sabha. In Telangana, Keshav Rao left BRS and joined Congress, and he also resigned from his Rajya Sabha membership.
Out of these 12 seats, 7 were previously held by BJP's Rajya Sabha MPs. The contest in Maharashtra and Bihar can be very tough. According to political experts, BJP's position looks strong in Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Tripura and it can win these seats.
Talking about Haryana, the contest here will be very interesting. Out of 90 assembly seats in the state, there are now 87 MLAs. BJP has 41 of these MLAs, while Gopal Kanda of Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP) and independent MLA Nayan Pal Rawat support BJP, which increases BJP's tally to 44. The opposition has 43 MLAs, which includes 28 from Congress, 10 from JJP, and three independent MLAs. These independent MLAs had earlier supported BJP, but now they have gone to the Congress camp.
In these Rajya Sabha by-elections, BJP's position is strong in many states, but a tough fight can be seen in some states. It will be interesting to see what the situation becomes in the upcoming elections.
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