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Other key candidates include a retired Lt. Gen. close to Congress’ ex-Haryana CM Hooda, and two of its own general secretaries.

New Delhi: Media management has been at the core of the Narendra Modi government’s strategy ever since it came to power, and now, towards the end of its fourth year, it has rewarded two of its spokespersons with Rajya Sabha berths.

In the elections to be held on 23 March, the BJP’s media in-charge Anil Baluni has been fielded from Uttarakhand, while spokesperson G.V.L. Narasimha Rao has been fielded from Uttar Pradesh.

From Haryana, the party has decided to put up Lt. Gen. (retd) D.P. Vats, a former director and commandant of the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, who was earlier seen as close to Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s Congress government in the state. In 2011, the Haryana government had appointed Vats as chairman of its public service commission.

Two national general secretaries – Maharashtra in-charge Saroj Pandey and Haryana in-charge Anil Jain, are also on the list of candidates.

Strategic choices

The party has strategically chosen its candidates in Kerala, poll-bound Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh.

Choosing V. Muraleedharan has sent a message to the party cadre in Kerala, where the BJP is trying to break the Congress-Left duopoly. Muraleedharan was the state unit president, and has been associated with the Sangh Parivar’s student organisation, the ABVP, for a long time, despite hailing from CPI(M) stronghold Kannur and facing difficulties for his political affiliation.

In Karnataka, the party has rewarded Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the founder-chairman of Jupiter Capital Pvt Ltd, a company that is an investor in Republic TV. Chandrasekhar is a sitting RS MP, who went from being an independent to the vice-president of the NDA in Kerala.

In Maharashtra, where its age-old alliance with the Shiv Sena looks to be all but over, the party has decided to support former chief minister Narayan Rane. He briefly led the state at the head of the Shiv Sena-BJP government in 1999, and then served as cabinet minister in the Congress-NCP government after leaving his old party. He has now floated his own party, the Maharashtra Swabhimaan Paksh, and could aid the BJP’s bids for re-election to the Lok Sabha and the state assembly in 2019.

In Uttar Pradesh, Ashok Bajpai, one of the founding members of the Samajwadi Party who left to join the BJP last year, has been fielded as a candidate.

Another candidate, Sakaldeep Rajbhar, a Ballia court stamp writer, is a significant choice, coming at a time when the BJP’s ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party and its leader Om Prakash Rajbhar, who is part of the Yogi Adityanath cabinet, have been criticising the government.

Others who have been named in the list are Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, Harnath Singh Yadav, and Kanta Kardam.

From Jharkhand, the party has chosen Sameer Uranv, who is said to be close to CM Raghubar Das. In Rajasthan, the party has fielded Kirori Lal Meena, who has been in and out of the BJP, and RSS man Madan Lal Saini.

In Madhya Pradesh, party cadres who have worked for years have been rewarded – state vice-president and key election strategist Ajay Pratap Singh, and Kailash Soni, who has held many posts in the organisation. Both leaders belong to the Bundelkhand region, which could be significant in the assembly polls later this year.

Others’ lists

Meanwhile, the Congress too has issued its Rajya Sabha candidates’ list. It includes Kumar Ketkar, a Mumbai-based journalist and a columnist of ThePrint, from Maharashtra.

The JD(U) has decided to repeat its two candidates – tycoon Mahendra Prasad, popularly known as ‘King Mahendra’, who is up for his eighth term, and Vashishtha Narayan Singh.

The RJD has fielded its spokespersons Manoj Jha and Ashfaque Kareem.

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