Race for the nomination for the Rajya Sabha seat from Madhya Pradesh, which fell vacant following election of Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to Lok Sabha, heated up in ruling BJP here with several senior party leaders throwing their hats into the ring. Several senior BJP leaders have started lobbying with the Central party leadership to get the ticket for the by-election to the seat which is expected to be declared anytime, a senior party functionary told this newspaper on Thursday, unwilling to be quoted. The RS seat, vacated by Mr Scindia, will have tenure of two years for the candidate who wins the ensuing by-election to the seat, since the Union minister has completed four years as RS member before being elected to Lok Sabha.
Sources said that the possibility of the Centre opting to send one of the two Union ministers, Ranveet Singh Bittu and George Kurien, to the upper house from Madhya Pradesh cannot be ruled out. Both of them are not members of the parliament currently and they have to be elected to the parliament within six months. Sources said that the state leaders are mounting pressure on the Central leadership to give the RS nomination to state leaders only, instead of sending ‘an outsider’ to the upper house from Madhya Pradesh, ‘at least at this juncture’.
A strong section of BJP here argues that the party in the state has given stupendous show in November, 2023 Assembly elections and the just-concluded LS elections in Madhya Pradesh and hence, an o.
