The Bharatiya Janata Party has rolled out its last list of candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections.
BJP leader Sumitra Valmiki will be contesting from Madhya Pradesh. Member of Karnataka Legislative Council Lehar Singh Siroya will be contesting from Karnataka.
Siroya is considered a close aide of former Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa and was also the former treasurer of Karnataka’s BJP unit.
Former Lok Sabha MP Mithlesh Kumar and National President for Bharatiya Janata Party’s OBC Morcha K Laxman will be contesting from Uttar Pradesh. Kumar hails from the Shahjahanpur district in Uttar Pradesh and is a prominent face in the Dalit community.
Interestingly, Union Minority Affairs Minister, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who is in Rajya Sabha from Jharkhand, is not on this list. His Rajya Sabha term will end in July this year.
Elections to 57 Rajya Sabha seats spread across 15 states will take place on June 10.
The maximum number of seats is in Uttar Pradesh, with polls to be held for 11 vacancies.
The states where these biennial elections will be held are Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana.
The Election Commission of India said that the notification for the biennial elections has been issued on May 24, 2022, while the last date for making nominations is May 31, 2022.
The last date for withdrawal of candidature is June 3, 2022. The counting of votes will be held on June 10, after the polling process gets over, the ECI statement read.