BJP to send Sushil Modi to Rajya Sabha

Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi is likely to be the party’s unanimous choice for the upcoming elections to five Rajya Sabha seats from Bihar as there was no opposition to his candidature when its state election committee met in Patna on Monday.

Of the five seats falling vacant, polling for which will be held in the second week of June, the BJP is set to clinch one while the ruling alliance partners, the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, will get two each.

List sent to Delhi

Out of the total 243 seats in the state Assembly, the BJP has 53 legislators and will therefore win one RS seat comfortably. “A list of names has been prepared to be sent to the central leadership, but there was no dissension on the candidature of Sushil Kumar Modi,” a senior state BJP leader told The Hindu .

Earlier, several names from the BJP were doing rounds for the Rajya Sabha seat, with the name of Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman also being mentioned during the past few days.

The two-year term of Ms. Sitharaman is set to expire on June 21.

However, Sushil Kumar Modi, a former Deputy Chief Minister, is considered the frontrunner among other possible candidates like Syed Shahnawaz Hussain and ex-state BJP chief Gopal Narayan Singh.

A party leader told The Hindu , “Since the BJP in Bihar is today a divided house with pro- and anti-Sushil Modi camps, the party may want to move him out of Bihar to the Centre (by giving him the Rajya Sabha seat). Many in the party believe that BJP suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2015 elections because of his personal interference in ticket distribution.”

Another leader, however, said that with the JD(U)-RJD alliance set to rule Bihar till 2020, Mr. Modi himself wanted to move to the Centre. Of the remaining four seats, the JD(U) and RJD are set to win two each. The RJD has 80 members in the Assembly while the JD(U) has 72: the support of 36 MLAs is required to win one Rajya Sabha seat.

Rabri in the fray

From the RJD, names of Rabri Devi, Misa Bharti (elder daughter of RJD chief Lalu Prasad) and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh are doing rounds whereas from the JD(U), the probable candidates include R.C.P. Sinha, a close confidante of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and former party president Sharad Yadav. Besides, seven State Council seats too are falling vacant and the BJP is likely to get a couple of seats, if it gets support from some independent MLAs.