SP’s Jaya Bachchan, Ramji Lal Suman and Alok Ranjan file papers for Rajya Sabha

Samajwadi Party MPs Dimple Yadav and Jaya Bachchan during the prayer of Shaligram Shila for Dudheshwar Mahadev Temple, Etawah, at party headquarters, in Lucknow on Feb 13.

LUCKNOW: Four-time Rajya Sabha member Jaya Bachchan, Dalit leader Ramji Lal Suman, and former Uttar Pradesh chief secretary Alok Ranjan on Tuesday filed their nomination papers as Samajwadi Party (SP) candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections, people familiar with the matter said.

The SP has the numbers to send three members to the Rajya Sabha. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday announced the names of the seven candidates for the Rajya Sabha elections.

Ten Rajya Sabha seats from UP are falling vacant on April 2 when nine BJP members and one SP member will retire.

The last date for the filing of the nomination for the polls is February 15. Polling, if required, will be held on February 27 and the results will be announced on the same day.

An election will be held for these seats if any party names any more candidates over the 10 already announced by the BJP and SP.

Apart from Jaya Bachchan, the other two SP members in the Rajya Sabha are Ram Gopal Yadav and Javed Ali Khan.

A candidate would need 37 first preference votes to secure a seat in the Rajya Sabha and thus the SP would comfortably be able to send 3 members to the Rajya Sabha.

Jaya Bachchan, 75, is a four-time Samajwadi Party Rajya Sabha member and will be only second SP leader to get a fifth term. The first was the chief national general secretary, Ram Gopal Yadav who is currently serving his fifth term. Jaya Bachchan, an actor, is the wife of the actor Amitabh Bachchan.

Alok Ranjan, 67, is a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who served as Uttar Pradesh’s chief secretary between 2014 and 2016 when Akhilesh Yadav was the UP chief minister. An alumnus of Stephen’s College, Delhi, the retired bureaucrat also did his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad. He has been associated with the Samajwadi Party since 2017 and is part of the party’s think tank.

Ramji Lal Suman, 73, is a prominent Dalit leader and a four-time Lok Sabha member from Firozabad. Suman, who also unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha elections from Hathras seat in 2014 and 2019, has been a long-time associate of SP founder, late Mulayam Singh Yadav since their days in the Janata Dal. He is considered a prominent Dalit leader and wields influence in Firozabad, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Hathras, and Aligarh.

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