BJP president Amit Shah will contest for Rajya Sabha elections from Gujarat which signals an end to his ambition to return to Ahemdabad and opens a possibility of his joining the union government in future.
Even after becoming the party president in 2014, Shah had retained his Naranpura MLA seat and had even attended assembly session on March 30 which was reportedly after a gap of two years. He also gave a fourty-minute speech in the assembly attacking Congress for being a stumbling block in state’s development. Shah, however, has all along denied that he nurtured any Gujarat ambition after coming to Delhi.
BJP parliamentary board in its meeting held on Wednesday evening decided to field Shah and re-nominate union minister Smriti Zubin Irani to Rajya Sabha from Gujarat, party leader JP Nadda announced. For the third seat of Gujarat which is also due for poll on August 18, Nadda said the party is “deliberating” on the candidature but state leaders will decide and let know their views to the central leadership.
While the party is confident of sending both its leaders to the Upper House, it is unsure about the third seat though the BJP is trying to stop Congress leader Ahmad Patel from coming back to the House for the fifth consecutive term.
Nadda also stated that tribal leader Sampatia Uike will contest for by-poll from Madhya Pradesh following the death of union minister Anil Dave. A tribal leader from the Mahakoshal region, Uike is an active party leader having worked with the ABVP as well, Nadda said.
Of the ten RS seats that will be up for polls on August 8, six are from West Bengal. The outgoing MPs are Ahmed Patel (Congress), Dilipbhai Pandya and Smriti Irani ( both BJP) from Gujarat and Derek O’Brien, Debabrata Bandhopadhyay, Sukhenduhakhar Roy and Dola Sen (all TMC), Pradip Bhattacharya (Congress) and Sitaram Yechury (CPI(M)) from West Bengal.
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