NEW DELHI: The BJP has announced four more candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls. Similar to the first list, there are no top leaders this time as well. Elections will be held to 57 Rajya Sabha seats in 15 states. So far, the party has announced 22 candidates for the polls.

Those in the candidate list include the party’s OBC wing chief K Laxman and Mithilesh Kumar from Uttar Pradesh, Sumitra Valmiki from Madhya Pradesh and Lal Singh Sirhoya from Karnataka.

The first list was published on May 29, naming a total of 18 candidates. Suresh Gopi and Alphons Kannanthanam from Kerala, who had completed their terms, were not included in the first list of candidates. Meantime, the names of union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal were included in the first list.

However, it needs to be noted that the names of top-ranking leaders, including union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Prakash Javadekar, were excluded from the list. In addition, leaders namely Vasundhara Raje, Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, Zafar Islam, M J Akbar, Shiv Pratap Shukla and O P Mathur were also not given tickets to Rajya Sabha.

However, Naqvi’s ticket chances cannot be ruled out as there are two more seats left in Uttar Pradesh. Rumours are rife that he will be brought to Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh, Laxmikant Bajpai, Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, Surendra Singh Nagar, Baburam Nishad, Darshana Singh and Sangeetha Yadav will contest in the polls. In Maharashtra, elections will take place in six vacant seats. Anil Bonde will contest in one of those seats.

Other candidates include Ghanshyam Tiwari from Rajasthan, Kalpana Saini from Uttarakhand, Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhu Sharan Patel from Bihar, Krishan Lal Panwar from Haryana, Kavita Patidar from Madhya Pradesh, Nirmala Sitharaman and Jaggesh from Karnataka and Piyush Goyal from Maharashtra.

In Tamil Nadu, elections are to be held in six seats. However, the BJP has not yet announced its candidates in the state. The vacancies are: Uttar Pradesh – 11, Tamil Nadu – 6, Maharashtra-6, Bihar-5, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan - 4 each, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha – 3 each, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Jharkhand, Haryana – 2 each and Uttarakhand – 1.