Rajya Sabha polls: 8 fresh BJP faces for UP, Hardeep Puri among 2 ministers dropped

Bengali film actor Koel Mallick with Bengal CM Suvendu Adhikari after filing her nomination for the RS election in Kolkata

NEW DELHI: BJP on Monday did not renominate two Union ministers, Hardeep Singh Puri and B L Verma, as its Rajya Sabha picks from Uttar Pradesh, rekindling speculation that PM Narendra Modi is looking to reshuffle his council of ministers as vacancies rise.Two other ministers, Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurien, were similarly left out of Rajya Sabha nominations in June, leading to their resignation. While these two were state ministers, a position held by Verma as well, Puri is a Cabinet minister holding the crucial portfolio of petroleum and natural gas.His likely exit from the Cabinet after the then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan quit in July following CJP’s stir over paper leaks further makes the case of a reshuffle as both are demanding portfolios. Consumer affairs, food and public distribution minister Pralhad Joshi is currently handling the education ministry as an additional charge.A minister since Sep 2017, former diplomat Puri is the lone Sikh face in the council of ministers and had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from Amritsar in 2019.

Whether BJP deploys Puri for Punjab polls remains to be seen

Some Union ministers like Pankaj Chaudhary and Harsh Malhotra, now heading BJP’s state units in UP and Delhi respectively, have been given organisation responsibilities in an indication that their continuation in govt is unlikely to continue beyond the expected reshuffle.Puri’s term as Rajya Sabha MP from UP ends in Nov, and rules allow a minister to hold his office for six months without being an MP. Not having much of a political constituency of his own, it remains to be seen if he, like Bittu, will be deployed in the Punjab assembly polls, scheduled to be held along with four other states, including UP, early next year.While the impending Punjab election was cited by some experts as a case for his continuation due to his Sikh background, BJP brass in the end chose to not repeat any of its RS candidates, a practice it had followed in the last round of elections as well.Since taking over as PM in 2014, Modi has gone for an overhaul of his council of ministers before the mid-term in both his earlier stints, giving rise to the prospect of a major rejig as his govt is now well into its third year in its third stint.