Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, along with his Cabinet colleagues Ravi Shankar Prasad, JP Nadda, Dharmendra Pradhan, Thawar Chand Gehlot and Mansukh L Mandaviya, are set to be re-elected to the Rajya Sabha this month.

State Minister Purushottam Rupala and senior party leader Bhupender Yadav too will get another term in the Upper House in the biennial elections slated for March.

In a statement here, the BJP’s Central Election Committee announced the names of these eight prominent party leaders and ministers whose terms in the Rajya Sabha are coming to an end between April and May this year. Elections for these seats are scheduled for March 23. The significant move in this announcement is that the Finance Minister, who has represented Gujarat in the Rajya Sabha for a long time, will contest from Uttar Pradesh this time.

The BJP has a majority in the UP Assembly and elections are due for as many as 10 seats in the Hindi heartland State. A majority of those retiring, six MPs, are from the Samajwadi Party (SP). One is from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), another, Pramod Tiwari, is from the Congress, Vinay Katiyar is from the BJP and one more seat is to be contested because BSP supremo Mayawati resigned from the Upper House last year.

The BJP is set to win at least nine of these 10 seats. The Opposition can clinch one seat if they put up a joint candidate. Although the BJP has not announced the names of the rest of its candidates from UP, the shift of the FM to UP indicates that the ruling party will put up a fierce contest for all the seats in the politically critical UP.

Another important movement is of Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who represented Bihar in the Upper House, to Madhya Pradesh. Five seats are to be contested from MP this month. The movement of Pradhan from Bihar to MP indicated that the Congress, whose MP from Madhya Pradesh Satyavrat Chaturvedi is retiring, will struggle to retain this seat from a State where the BJP has a majority in the Assembly.

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