October 6, 2026: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday released its list of candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh, leaving Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri out of the list.
 
The ruling party has named eight candidates—Dharampal Singh, Radhakant Ojha, Prakash Pal, Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, Priyanka Singh Rawat, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Shruti Gangwar—for the biennial elections to the Upper House.
 
The BJP's announcement comes a day before the deadline for filing nominations. Elections to 12 Rajya Sabha seats across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal will be held on October 16. These include 10 seats from Uttar Pradesh, one from Uttarakhand and a bypoll for one seat from West Bengal.

Puri, whose Rajya Sabha term from Uttar Pradesh is set to end on November 25, had been among the names reportedly under consideration for renomination. He was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2018 in a bypoll after then Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar resigned from the Upper House to become Goa’s chief minister.
 
He had joined the Union Council of Ministers in 2017 during the first tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and was required to be a member of Parliament. Puri was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2020 and continued as a Union minister in the Modi 2.0 government. He is among the few BJP MPs to have completed two terms in the Rajya Sabha.
 
Puri is among the BJP leaders retiring from the Upper House from Uttar Pradesh, along with Arun Singh, Geeta Shakya, Neeraj Shekhar, Brijlal, B L Verma and Seema Dwivedi.

(Source: Business Standard)