The larger messaging behind BJP's Rajya Sabha nominations

Rajya Sabha

All eyes are on February 27 Rajya Sabha elections with the final round of nominations having concluded. Fifty-six seats of the Upper House will go to the polls to fill up vacancies that will arise in April.

Out of the 56 Rajya Sabha seats up for grabs, 28 belong to the BJP, 10 to the Congress, four to the Trinamool Congress (TMC), three to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), and two each to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Biju Janata Dal.

Among the 28 names announced by the party – the same as the number of seats held by it currently – 24 are new, with only four repeated.

The messaging behind BJP's RS names

BJP’s distribution of Rajya Sabha tickets is a clear affirmation of the strategy it wishes to adopt in the heartland states ahead of the Lok Sabha. The selection of names also sends a clear signal among its cadre.

Apart from a new-look Rajya Sabha brigade, the BJP has effectively signalled that its Lok Sabha ranks too will have a number of fresh faces. This, though, will be done keeping winnability in mind, sources said, given Modi’s target of 370 seats for the BJP.

The party, by not re-nominating 85 percent of its current members, is giving a chance to other candidates and rewarding them for their contributions.

In a way, the BJP's list gives confidence to its cadre and leaders that anybody's and everybody's time could come. The Congress, on the other hand, seems to have repeated most of its candidates in an attempt to adjust heavyweights from some or the other state.

The top leadership had made it clear on multiple occasions that it wanted senior names who had served several terms in the Rajya Sabha to contest the Lok Sabha elections.

Reading out the list

Of the 28, the BJP has renominated only four MPs: party president J.P. Nadda (Gujarat), Ashwini Vaishnaw (Odisha), L. Murugan (Madhya Pradesh) and Sudhanshu Trivedi (Uttar Pradesh).

Union ministers Mansukh Mandaviya and Parshottam Rupala from Gujarat, Narayan Rane from Maharashtra, Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Karnataka), Dharmendra Pradhan (Madhya Pradesh), V. Muraleedharan (Maharashtra) and Bhupender Yadav (Rajasthan) are retiring but have not been renominated.

According to media reports, all these ministers are likely to be fielded by the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha election.

Other big names that have not been renominated are Anil Baluni, Prakash Javadekar, Saroj Pandey and Sushil Kumar Modi. Their fate is not known, but they might also be asked to contest the general election.

Congress's Sonia Gandhi and BJP president JP Nadda have been elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan and Gujarat respectively.