NEW DELHI: The first list of BJP candidates for the June 10 Rajya Sabha elections has been announced. A list of 16 candidates has been announced. Elections will be held for 57 seats in 15 states. However, the names of Suresh Gopi and Alphons Kannanthanam from Kerala, who have completed their terms, are not in the list of candidates. However, the names of Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal have been included in the first list. The name of the outgoing Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi is not on the list.

Laxmikant Vajpayee, Radhamohan Aggarwal, Surendra Singh Nagar,Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh and Sangeeta Yadav will contest from Uttar Pradesh. In Maharashtra, apart from Piyush Goyal, elections are being held for 6 vacant seats. Anil Bonde will contest in one of these seats. Ghanshyam Tiwari from Rajasthan, Kalpana Saini from Uttarakhand, Satish Chandra Dubey from Bihar, Shambhu Sharan Patel from Bihar, Krishan Lal Panwar from Haryana, Kavita Patidar from Madhya Pradesh and Jaggesh from Karnataka are the other BJP candidates.

In Tamil Nadu, elections are to be held for six seats. However, the BJP has not yet announced their candidates in TN.

The election is being held for following number of seats five from Bihar, four each from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, three each from Madhya Pradesh and Odisha, two each from Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Telangana and one from Uttarakhand.