Rajya Sabha polls: BJP fields Piyush Goyal from Maharashtra

The BJP on Sunday announced 16 candidates for the June 10 Rajya Sabha polls, fielding Union ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman from Maharashtra and Karnataka respectively.

Of the 16 candidates, six are from Uttar Pradesh. The party has fielded two women — Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav — from the state.

The party announced the names of two candidates each from Karnataka, Maharashtra and Bihar and one candidate each from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Haryana.

The name of BJP general secretary Dushyant Gautam, who was a Rajya Sabha member from Haryana, was missing from the first list of candidates.

The party has given ticket to former MLA Krishan Lal Panwar from Haryana.

Kavita Patidar will be the party’s nominee from Madhya Pradesh, Ghanshyam Tiwari from Rajasthan and Kalpana Saini from Uttarakhand.

From Bihar, the party has fielded Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel. Anil Sukhdevrao Bonde has been nominated from Maharashtra and Jaggesh from Karnataka, according to a BJP release.