Retired at 75? How BJP picks its Lok Sabha candidates may depend on age

Party is assessing performance of its 301 Lok Sabha MPs, conducting surveys in their constituencies

If in 2024, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were to apply some of the unwritten guidelines it followed in selecting candidates for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, several of its Lok Sabha members, including its two-term MP from Mathura, Hema Malini, will not get the party ticket. Malini turns 75 this October, as would a dozen of her party colleagues in 2024.

The BJP's 2019 Lok Sabha win involved careful planning in accommodating allies, culling non-performers among its Lok Sabha Members of Parliament, and persuading its Rajya Sabha MPs to contest the Lok Sabha. It also retired MPs above 75 MPs, including Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.  

The BJP leadership has undertaken a similar stocktaking. BJP national president J P Nadda has met leaders of the northern, eastern and southern zones in separate occasions to gauge the party's preparedness. The exercise involves assessing the performance of the party's 301 Lok Sabha MPs, conducting surveys in their constituencies and dropping those facing anti-incumbency.  

At the time of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP's tally of MPs was 268. It dropped 99, or 36 per cent, of these. The BJP did not repeat 55, or nearly a third of its 158 first-time Lok Sabha MPs.

After its embarrassing loss to the Congress in the Chhattisgarh Assembly polls in December 2018, the BJP did not field any of its ten sitting MPs in the Lok Sabha elections four months later. It replaced a third of its MPs in Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

The party could ask at least a dozen of its 92 Rajya Sabha MPs, especially those who have served more than one term to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP has 18 MPs in the Rajya Sabha with more than one term (see chart).

	Member	Constituency	Terms	Date of Birth
1.	Hema Malini	Mathura	2	October 16, 1948
2.	Rama Devi	Sheohar	4	May 5, 1949
3.	Santosh Gangwar	Bareilly	8	November 1, 1948
4.	Rita Bahuguna Joshi	Allahabad	1	July 22, 1949
5.	Akshaibar Lal	Bahraich	1	January 1, 1947
6.	Jaskaur Meena	Dausa	2	May 3, 1947
7.	Satyadev Pachauri	Kanpur	1	August 19, 1947
8.	Som Prakash	Hoshiarpur	1	April 3, 1949
9.	K C Patel	Kanpur	2	January 10, 1949
10.	Parbatbhai S Patel	Banaskantha	1	September 4, 1948
11.	Sharda A Patel	Mahesana	1	March 21, 1948
12.	V Sreenivasa Prasad	Chamrajanagar	6	August 6, 1947
13.	Vivek Narayan Shejwalkar	Gwalior	1	June 13, 1947
14.	Radha Mohan Singh	Purvi Champaran	6	September 1, 1949
15.	Pashupathi Nath Singh	Dhanbad	3	June 11, 1949

Source: https://sansad.in/ls (Lok Sabha website)
 

The list of those having served more than one Rajya Sabha term includes Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav, Piyush Goyal, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Hardeep Singh Puri (see box). External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2019, is up for re-election later this month.

	Member’s name	Age	State representing	Terms	Serving till
1.	Rajeev Chandrasekhar	59	Karnataka	3	2018-24
2.	Piyush Goyal	59	Maharashtra	3	2022-28
3.	Satish Chandra Dubey	48	Bihar	2	2022-28
4.	S Jaishankar	68	Gujarat	Contesting 2nd term	2019-23
5.	Prakash Javadekar	72	Maharashtra	3	2018-24
6.	Bhubanewsar Kalita	72	Assam	5	2020-26
7.	Mansukh Mandaviya	51	Gujarat	2	2018-24
8.	JP Nadda	62	HP	2	2018-24
9.	Surendra Singh Nagar	58	Uttar Pradesh	3	2022-28
10.	Nirmala Sitharaman	63	Karnataka	3	2022-28
11.	Dharmendra Pradhan	54	Madhya Pradesh	2	2018-24
12.	Hardeep Puri	71	Uttar Pradesh	2	2020-26
13.	CM Ramesh	58	Andhra Pradesh	3	2018-24
14.	Nabam Rebia	60	Arunachal Pradesh	3	2020-26
15.	Parshottam Rupala	68	Gujarat	3	2018-24
16.	Neeraj Shekhar	54	Uttar Pradesh	3	2020-26
17.	Arun Singh	58	Uttar Pradesh	2	2020-26
18.	Bhupender Yadav	54	Rajasthan	2	2018-24

Source: https://sansad.in/rs (Rajya Sabha website)

Puri was a Rajya Sabha MP in 2019 when he contested the Lok Sabha from Amritsar and lost. His Rajya Sabha colleagues Ravi Shankar Prasad and Smriti Irani fared better. It is, however, unlikely that the party will push septuagenarians, such as Puri and Prakash Javadekar, to contest.

Of the 92 Rajya Sabha MPs, 28 will end their terms in April 2024.

In the Lok Sabha, 15 BJP MPs were born before 1950. Some have already turned 75. Others, such as Hema Malini and eight-term Bareilly MP Santosh Gangwar, will mark their 75th birthdays in the next few months. Some will turn 75 in 2024.

In 2019, the BJP denied tickets to Mahajan, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, B C Khanduri, Kariya Munda, Kalraj Mishra, Bijoya Chakravarty and Shanta Kumar.

In the Lok Sabha, the BJP has two MPs—Maneka Gandhi and Santosh Gangwar—who have served eight terms. The party’s Tikamgarh (Madhya Pradesh) MP and Union minister Virendra Kumar has done seven. There are eight BJP MPs, including Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who have served six terms, 11 have served five, 19 are into their fourth terms, 28 are in their third, 97 are into their second and 135 MPs are in their first term.