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Saturday, Mar 11, 2006

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National

BJP list for Rajya Sabha polls

Special Correspondent

Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Vinay Katiyar included

NEW DELHI: Senior leaders Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj and the former Bajrang Dal chief, Vinay Katiyar, are among the 18 candidates cleared by the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday for the biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha. Nine of the 16 retiring members of the party from the Upper House have been cleared for another term, while Ms. Swaraj will now represent Madhya Pradesh instead of Uttaranchal.

Besides Mr. Jaitley and Ms. Swaraj, the other seven members who feature in BJP's list of candidates for a fresh term are Bal Apte from Maharashtra, Surendra Singh Ahluwalia from Jharkhand, Kalraj Mishra from Uttar Pradesh, Vikram Verma and Narayan Singh Kesari from Madhya Pradesh, Rudra Narayan Pany from Orissa and Ravi Shankar Prasad from Bihar.

New faces

The new faces are Gopalji Vyas from Chhattisgarh, Anusuya Uikey from Madhya Pradesh, Bhagirathi Majhi from Orissa, K.B. Shanappa from Karnataka, Krishna Lal Valmiki and Ramdas Agrawal from Rajasthan, Vijaybhai Roopani and Kanjibhai Patel from Gujarat besides Mr. Katiyar from Uttar Pradesh.

The list was cleared after two rounds of meetings of the central election committee under the presidentship of Rajnath Singh. Among those who attended the meeting were the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, L.K. Advani, and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Jaswant Singh.

Releasing the list at a press conference in the evening, committee secretary Pramod Mahajan said candidates for two more seats — one each in Karnataka and Bihar — would be decided later after discussions with allies. Also, the party has decided to field Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi for the State Legislative Council elections to two vacancies, the other candidate being Baleshwar Bharati.

Of the 18 candidates, three each are from the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes and two are women. In this round, 58 seats are to be filled up from 15 States. Barring one candidate — Mr. Majhi — the other 17 BJP nominees will contest for a full term.

Mr. Majhi will only get the remaining term of Chhattrapal Singh Lodha, who was expelled from the House in the cash-for-query scam.

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