S Jaishankar And Ram Vilas Paswan Likely To Be Elected To Rajya Sabha From Gujarat And Bihar

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to endorse Ram Vilas Paswan as NDA's nominee candidate from Bihar for a seat in the Rajya Sabha. Similarly, it is expected that the BJP will be nominating the newly inducted External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar as its nominee from Gujarat, reports Economic Times.

Three seats belonging to the party got vacant in the upper house of the parliament after senior leaders Amit Shah, Smriti Irani and Ravi Shankar Prasad got elected to the Lok Sabha in the just concluded elections.

To remain Cabinet ministers in the government, Paswan and Jaishankar will need to be elected to either of the two houses of the parliament within six months. Here, it should be noted that their election is likely to face no hurdles given the BJP is in power in Gujarat and the NDA in Bihar.

Paswan has been a parliamentarian for several decades however Jaishankar who has been a renowned career diplomat will be becoming a member of parliament for the first time. He was India's ambassador to the United States when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had come to power in 2014. Later he was called back to India and appointed Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs.