The BJP on Wednesday released another list of Rajya Sabha candidates nominating railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw from Odisha. The Rajya Sabha election is to be held on February 27. Vaishnaw was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2019 with the help of the BJD. As this time too, BJD did not announce the name of a third candidate – its two candidates are Debashish Samantaray and Subhasish Khuntia — it was speculated that Vaishnaw would get re-elected to the Rajya Sabha and the BJD would support. BJP has the requires strength to win all the three vacant Rajya Sabha seats but BJP would require BJD’s support as BJP has only 22 MLAs in Odisha Assembly.

A candidate requires at least 37 votes to win one RS seat in Odisha.

Ashwini Vaishnaw is from Rajasthan but served in Odisha as an IAS officer before he quit his IAS job in 2010.

Vaishnaw’s tenure as a Rajya Sabha member from Odisha ends in April this year. Though he belonged to BJP, Vaishnaw was elected to the Upper House of Parliament from Odisha on BJD support in 2019. BJD president and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik announced his party’s support to Vaishnaw after a request from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah in 2019.

Candidate list of the BJP for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election

In the second list, the BJP announced the candidates for Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.

Madhya Pradesh: Dr L Murugan, Umesh Nath Maharaj, Maya Naroliya, Bansilal Gurjar

Odisha: Ashwini Vaishnaw

Earlier, BJP announced 14 names for the Rajya Sabha election.

Bihar: Dr Dharmsheela Gupta, Dr Bhim Singh

Chhattisgarh: Raja Devendra Pratap Singh

Haryana: Subhash Barala

Karnataka: Narayana Krishanasa Bhandage

Uttar Pradesh: Sudhanshu Trivedi, RPN Singh, Chaudhary Tejveer Singh, Sadhna Singh, Amarpal Maurya, Sangita Balwant, Navin Jain

Uttarakhand: Mahendra Bhatt

West Bengal: Samik Bhattacharya