New Delhi/Lucknow, Oct. 5 -- The BJP's decision to leave Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri and B L Verma out of its Uttar Pradesh Rajya Sabha list on Monday has sent indications of keeping a balance between castes and recalibration of the party's social and regional strategy in the country's politically important state that goes to Assembly polls early next year.
The BJP announced its eight nominations for the Rajya Sabha elections on October 16 from Uttar Pradesh, preferring a combination that gives more importance to caste calculations, organisational loyalty, and regional balancing than to seniority in the Upper House. Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who was expected to be named, is not on the list, indicating a rejig at the Centre also in the days to come.
The candidates named by the party are state minister Dharam Pal Singh, Radhakant Ojha, Prakash Pal, Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, Priyanka Singh Rawat, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Shruti Gangwar.
Both Puri and Verma, whose tenure in the Rajya Sabha expires next month, were left off the list despite being members of the Union Council of Ministers.
The list provides the BJP with a chance to update its presence from the state of Uttar Pradesh and send a message to its social base. The list includes three OBCs, two Brahmins, two Dalits, and one Thakur, and also two women.
OBCs play an important role in the alliance. BJP MLA Dharam Pal Singh from Aonla in Bareilly belongs to the Lodh caste, which carries some weight in the Rohilkhand and Bundelkhand regions. The BJP's connection with the Lodh community is known to be associated with the politics of erstwhile chief minister Kalyan Singh, who was considered to be one of the tallest leaders of the OBCs in the BJP in Uttar Pradesh.
The other two OBCs are Prakash Pal, who heads the OBC Morcha of the BJP in the state, and Shruti Gangwar from Bareilly. Shruti Gangwar is the daughter of Jharkhand Governor and former Union Minister Santosh Gangwar.
The Brahmin quota nomination includes Radhakant Ojha, a lawyer from Prayagraj and brother of ex-minister Shivakant Ojha, and Gopi Krishna Pandey from Kanpur, who has served in the BJP's farmers' and youth wings. Regarding the Dalit quota nomination, the BJP has opted for Priyanka Singh Rawat, the former MP and state vice-president from Barabanki, and Vidyasagar Sonkar from Jaunpur, who is a former state general secretary and MLC.
The eighth candidate, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan from Agra, is a BJP state general secretary and experienced in election campaign management.
The BJP has won three seats in the UP Rajya Sabha election so far. In total, Uttar Pradesh elects 31 members to the Rajya Sabha, which is a key state for the BJP's calculations in the national sphere. There are ten seats that will have elections scheduled on October 16. The term of the incumbent members ends on November 25.
Some of the BJP leaders who will retire are Puri, Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Neeraj Shekhar, Brijlal, B L Verma and Seema Dwivedi, along with Samajwadi Party leader Ram Gopal Yadav and BSP's Ramji Gautam.
There is one additional vacancy in the Rajya Sabha that has remained so since September 11, after the resignation of former Uttar Pradesh deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma after he was appointed as the Lieutenant Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
The BJP's decision to field eight new faces from Uttar Pradesh for the Rajya Sabha elections also reflects a carefully calibrated mix of caste, regional representation and gender, with the party looking beyond established names as it prepares for the 2027 Assembly elections.
Ten seats from Uttar Pradesh are falling vacant, with the BJP expected to secure eight based on its strength in the state Assembly. The composition of the list indicates that the party has given considerable weight to social engineering.
The choices are significant in the context of the BJP's political contest with the Samajwadi Party, which has built its campaign around the PDA formulation of backward classes, Dalits and minorities. The BJP's list gives representation to several backward and Dalit communities while retaining representation among its traditional upper-caste support base.
Dharampal Singh, a Lodh leader and Cabinet minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, is also the BJP's state organisational secretary. His inclusion gives representation to the Lodh community, an important OBC group in western and central Uttar Pradesh. His nomination also underlines the BJP's preference for leaders with organisational experience.
Prakash Pal, a BJP regional office-bearer, represents the Pal community, while Vidyasagar Sonkar is a prominent Dalit leader and former MP and MLC. Radhakant Ojha and Gopi Krishna Pandey provide Brahmin representation, while Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan represents the Rajput community.
The regional spread of the nominees is another element of the list. Rather than relying on nationally prominent leaders, the BJP has picked leaders with links to the party's state organisation and different social and regional constituencies.
The BJP's choice carries significance beyond the Rajya Sabha arithmetic. By choosing eight relatively new faces, including organisational leaders and two women, the party has used the nominations to signal representation across communities and regions while simultaneously giving its state-level leadership greater space in Parliament. The BJP is certain to win seven seats and is pushing for an eighth. All eight candidates are likely to file their nominations in Lucknow today in the presence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and State Unit Chief Pankaj Chaudhary.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.