Sitharaman, Scindia & More: Modi Ministers With RS Seats May Have to Fight in 2024 to ‘Prove Mettle’

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made heads turn in the recently concluded assembly election by fielding a total of 21 Members of Parliament (MPs) as candidates across four states.

These included then sitting Union cabinet minister Narendra Singh Tomar, who was asked to fight the Madhya Pradesh election, and former Union minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, who was fielded from Jothwara and is now a Rajasthan minister after winning the seat. Rajasthan’s Deputy Chief Minister Diya Kumari was also an MP when her name was announced as a candidate from Vidhyadhar Nagar seat in Jaipur. Of the 21 MPs fielded, 12 won the election.

Now, if sources are to be believed, BJP is “actively considering” asking many of its sitting Rajya Sabha members to fight the Lok Sabha election and “prove their mettle”. This includes sitting Union ministers who were elected in the Upper House.

In 2014, then Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley was asked to fight from Amritsar. But this time, the party is weighing its options to field a bouquet of Rajya Sabha MPs, including top ministers, in the Lok Sabha poll.

News18 has spoken to multiple sources in the BJP who have hinted that the move is “under active consideration”. Though any final decision in this regard will be taken by BJP’s Central Election Committee (CEC), which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a part of, sources indicate that certain names have been considered for a while now.

Nirmala Sitharaman

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is a Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka, is one such name. BJP’s top leadership is considering asking her to fight the Lok Sabha poll from Tamil Nadu.

Sitharaman was born in a Tamil Iyengar family in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. She did her schooling in Villupuram, Chennai, and Tiruchirappalli. The BJP is keen to make inroads in the state where its state president Annamalai’s aggressive outreach made former NDA ally AIADMK break up the alliance in the state.

The Modi government has been wooing Tamilians every December through the Kashi Tamil Sangamam in PM’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi since 2022. The idea was to bridge the perceived gap between North and South. Besides the Kasi Viswanathar temple in Tenkasi, there are hundreds of Shiva temples in Tamil Nadu that bear the name of Kashi. In 2022, when the Sangamam began, Sitharaman was present in Varanasi.

Ashwini Vaishnaw

The former IAS officer was brought into the Rajya Sabha in 2019 from Odisha for his domain expertise. Ever since, he has become an intrinsic part of BJP’s organisation and was appointed the party’s election co-in-charge for the Madhya Pradesh assembly poll last year.

Sources say the BJP wants to field him from a seat in either Rajasthan or Odisha.

While he was born in Rajasthan and studied there, Vaishnaw served as a collector in the Cuttack and Balasore districts of Odisha. His hands-on approach during the rescue mission after the Balasore train accident and camping on railway tracks is said to have impressed the BJP’s top leadership.

Bhupendra Yadav

Yadav, who enjoys Amit Shah’s trust and is widely credited for BJP’s Gujarat election win in 2022 and Madhya Pradesh victory in 2023, is another name doing the rounds. Currently the environment minister, Yadav is a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan.

Also a BJP general secretary, Yadav is likely to be fielded from either Rajasthan or Haryana, say party sources. “Though he was born in Ajmer, he has close links with Haryana as well. Not many know that his ancestral house is in Gurugram. He has a great deal of influence in that belt of Gurugram, Manesar, Rewari,” said a BJP leader on condition of anonymity.

Jyotiraditya Scindia

The BJP put all speculations about Scindia to rest when it elected Mohan Yadav as its new chief minister in Madhya Pradesh. The former Congressman, who joined BJP in 2020, is the Union civil aviation minister and also elected to the Upper House. In 2019, he fought the Lok Sabha election from Madhya Pradesh’s Guna and lost to the BJP. But much has changed ever since.

There are murmurs that Scindia too may be asked to fight the Lok Sabha election this time from Madhya Pradesh if the CEC okays his name. Informed sources say the prime minister is happy with the way he coordinated as aviation minister during India’s various evacuations, particularly during the Ukraine-Russia war.

Dharmendra Pradhan

Known as an organisation person who always wears a smile, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan too is likely to be fielded in the Lok Sabha election this time. Party sources say Pradhan himself is also keen to fight it out instead of staying in the Upper House.

The BJP thinks if Pradhan, who hails from Odisha fights Lok Sabha poll from the state, it will put the party in a better position on many adjoining seats as well. Pradhan earlier fought Lok Sabha in 2009 from Odisha’s Devgarh, which got split into two seats after delimitation.

Mansukh Mandaviya

Mandaviya is among the most prominent Patidar leaders of the BJP. He comes from Saurashtra region of Gujarat, where the party performed poorly in the 2017 assembly elections. He enjoys the trust of Prime Minister Modi due to his performance during the pandemic despite not holding the health portfolio back then.

As a Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, he played a key role in bridging the gap between the demand and supply ratio of oxygen during the height of the pandemic. This seems to have earned him the cabinet berth post reshuffle.

This Leuva Patidar leader was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) in Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.