BJP names RS nominees

Sushma, Apte, Katiyar, Jaitley selected

A heavy RSS and VHP presence characterised the BJP's list of Rajya Sabha nominees as RSS pointsman and party Vice-President Bal Apte, former Bajrang Dal chief Vinay Katiyar, Anusuya Uikhey and Gopal Vyas found their names in the list released by the party today.

The list was cleared by a BJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by party President Rajnath Singh.

The BJP and JD(U), the party's ally in Bihar, have had a falling out over one seat in Bihar where the BJP needed 15 to 16 JD(U) votes as a clincher. The one clear seat from Bihar with the BJP has been given to Ravi Shankar Prasad.

"We are only announcing names for seats where we have a clear majority. For the one seat in Bihar and another in Karnataka, where we need 12 more votes, we are still in talks," BJP leader Pramod Mahajan said.

Former union ministers Sushma Swaraj and Vikram Verma along with Narayan Kesri, a scheduled caste candidate, and Anusuya Uikhey, associated for a long time with the RSS and a scheduled tribe candidate, have been nominated from Madhya Pradesh.

Bal Apte has been nominated from Maharashtra, while S S Ahluwalia has been repeated from Jharkhand. BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley has been nominated from Gujarat. Other nominees from the state are Kanjhibahi Patel and Vijaybhai Rupani who are both loyalists of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

In fact former Gujarat Chief Minister and Modi baiter Keshubhai Patel had met Leader of the Opposition L K Advani to lobby for outgoing Rajya Sabha member A K Patel, but Advani decided to go with Modi's choice.

The Uttar Pradesh unit had sent in the names of Kalraj Mishra and Vinay Katiyar, which were accepted. Gopalji Vyas, who has also been associated with the RSS for a long time, has been nominated from Chhattisgarh. K B Shanappa, a scheduled tribe candidate, has been nominated from Karnataka, while Krishna Lal Valmiki, a scheduled caste candidate, and Ram Dass Agarwal have been nominated from Rajasthan.

The meeting of senior leaders including, former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and former party president L K Advani, also decided on the names of Ashok Dhawan and Ram Naresh Rawat (SC) for the election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi and Baleshwar Bharati have been nominated to the Bihar Legislative Council.