Hardeep Singh Puri out: 8 new faces in BJP’s UP Rajya Sabha list carry a 2027 message

The first clue to what the BJP wants to do in Uttar Pradesh next year may have come not from the Assembly election schedule, but from a list of eight names released on Monday.

The BJP’s Rajya Sabha nominations for Uttar Pradesh dropped every one of its eight outgoing members and replaced them with a slate dominated by leaders whose careers have been built in the organisation, in the Assembly or in regional politics. But one name missing from the list makes the exercise bigger than a Rajya Sabha election.

Also Read: BJP names 8 new Rajya Sabha candidates from UP, leaves out Hardeep Singh Puri and BL Verma


Union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri, a two-term Rajya Sabha member from Uttar Pradesh, has not been renominated. Neither has minister of state B L Verma, another UP leader and RS member since 2020. Arun Singh, Seema Dwivedi, Neeraj Shekhar, Brij Lal and Geeta Shakya have also been left out. Dinesh Sharma, the eighth outgoing BJP member, had already resigned from the Rajya Sabha after being appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The UP list is built for UP

The eight new names are Dharampal Singh, Radhakant Ojha, Prakash Pal, Vidyasagar Sonkar, Gopi Krishna Pandey, Priyanka Singh Rawat, Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan and Shruti Gangwar.

The list has a clear social and regional spread. It includes three OBC faces, two Dalit leaders, two Brahmins and one Rajput. It also gives representation to different parts of the state, from western UP and Rohilkhand to Purvanchal, Bundelkhand and the Prayagraj region.

The BJP is refreshing its representation from the most politically important state at a time when the party and the Samajwadi Party are preparing for another contest with factors at playover caste, community and regional alliances.

The choice of Dharampal Singh is perhaps the clearest example. A veteran BJP politician and minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, Singh has been an MLA multiple times and represents Aonla. He belongs to the Lodhi-Rajput community, an OBC grouping with political weight in western and central UP.

Prakash Pal is a different kind of pick. He is the BJP's UP OBC Morcha president and comes from the Gaderia community, classified among the state's most backward communities. His elevation brings a sitting organisational leader into the parliamentary fold while giving the party a face from the Kanpur-Bundelkhand belt.

Then there is Vidyasagar Sonkar, a Dalit leader from Jaunpur. Sonkar has been part of politics for decades, has represented the Saidpur and has also served in the state organisation and Legislative Council.

Also Read: Cabinet reshuffle on cards as 12 ministers hold multiple portfolios, key posts may get new faces

Priyanka Singh Rawat was elected to the Lok Sabha from Barabanki in 2014, defeating Congress veteran P L Punia, and became one of the youngest MPs. After being denied a ticket in 2019, she moved deeper into the party organisation and was recently made a state vice-president. Her return to frontline politics through the Rajya Sabha nomination gives the BJP a woman Dalit leader with both electoral and organisational experience.

The two Brahmin faces are Radhakant Ojha and Gopi Krishna Pandey.

Ojha is a senior advocate in the Allahabad High Court and has twice been elected president of the Bar Association. He began practising at the High Court in 1987 and was designated a senior advocate in 2013. His association with former UP Assembly Speaker Keshari Nath Tripathi and his years in the legal and organisational ecosystem give the BJP a prominent Brahmin face from the Prayagraj region.

Pandey is more clearly an organisation man. He began his public life with the ABVP and subsequently held responsibilities in the BJP and its Kisan Morcha. He has served as the party's state minister and has handled organisational responsibilities in several states. His roots are associated with Ballia's Rasra area, giving the party another Brahmin face from Purvanchal.

Ram Pratap Singh Chauhan is the lone Rajput in the list. A former MLA from Etmadpur in Agra, Chauhan began his political career in 1991 as a BJYM mandal president. He went on to hold several organisational positions, became a BJP state general secretary in 2023 and retained that role in the party's latest state team. He has also been given responsibility for western Uttar Pradesh.

And then there is Shruti Gangwar, daughter of former Union minister and long-time Bareilly politician Santosh Gangwar. Her inclusion gives the list a younger face and another OBC representation from Rohilkhand.

The arithmetic is tight enough to matter

Ten seats are falling vacant in Uttar Pradesh on October 16. Eight are currently held by the BJP, with one each belonging to the SP and BSP. Each candidate needs 37 first-preference votes because the Assembly's effective strength is 396 after seven vacancies.

The BJP has 255 MLAs. Its NDA partners - Apna Dal (S), RLD, SBSP and Nishad Party — add 33, taking the alliance to 288.
The BJP camp can take that number further with the support of MLAs who have moved away from the SP or voted with the BJP in the previous Rajya Sabha election. The effective strength has been put at 294, still two short of the 296 votes needed to guarantee all eight BJP seats.

The SP has 101 MLAs on paper, although its effective strength is 100 after the defection of Puja Pal. The party has two candidates in the fray and had been considering a third, which would turn the 10th seat into a contest involving cross-voting and individual MLA calculations.

The BJP has also been looking at legislators who had cross-voted in the previous Rajya Sabha election. Three SP MLAs naming Rakesh Pandey, Vinod Chaturvedi and Ashutosh Maurya remain formally with the SP but had voted with the BJP in 2024. Chaturvedi has already said he will vote for the BJP candidate.

And then there is Hardeep Puri

Puri is not a conventional UP politician. A former diplomat who entered active politics through the BJP, he has represented Uttar Pradesh in the Rajya Sabha and served in several important portfolios before taking charge of petroleum and natural gas.

His latest tenure in the oil ministry has coincided with one of the most difficult energy periods the Modi government has faced.

When the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted during the West Asia conflict, Puri became one of the government's most visible faces on fuel and energy security. He repeatedly spoke about maintaining supplies, diversifying crude sources and insulating Indian consumers from the disruption.

His ministry also dealt directly with Qatar and other Gulf suppliers during the crisis. Puri travelled to Doha in April as India sought to protect LNG and LPG supplies. So his exclusion is not the exit of an inconsequential minister. It creates a vacancy around a senior Cabinet minister at precisely the time the government is already dealing with several portfolio changes.

Puri and the Punjab question

Puri's importance to the BJP is not confined to the Union Cabinet. He is one of the party's most recognisable Sikh faces at the national level, and Punjab is scheduled to go to the polls in 2027.

The BJP's relationship with the Shiromani Akali Dal is itself being recalibrated. Puri has publicly said that if the Akali Dal returns to an alliance with the BJP, it would have to accept a junior role, making Puri's political future more complicated than whether he will have a Rajya Sabha seat after November.

Puri's parliamentary term runs until November 25, and the government will still have options for retaining a minister who does not immediately return through this particular UP Rajya Sabha election.

A minister, to hold onto their portfolio, has six months to get themselves re-elected to either houses of Parliament. Puri is not a member of Lok Sabha.

But the Monday list means that, for now, Puri's route back into Parliament is not through Uttar Pradesh. And that is precisely why his next assignment, if there is one, becomes part of the larger Cabinet conversation.

Is the Cabinet reshuffle finally taking shape?

There is no official announcement of a reshuffle yet. But the circumstances are increasingly conducive to one. Puri's Rajya Sabha term ends in November and his petroleum portfolio is expected to become available. The Union Council of Ministers has also seen significant changes in recent months, including Dharmendra Pradhan's departure and Pralhad Joshi taking additional charge of education. Several ministers are currently holding multiple portfolios.

And there is precedent for Modi using the middle years of a government to make substantial changes.

The first Modi government saw major exercises in November 2014, July 2016 and September 2017. The July 2016 reshuffle came months before the 2017 UP election. The biggest reshuffle of the second Modi government came in July 2021, when 12 ministers resigned and a large number of new ministers were inducted or promoted, with representation of SC and OBC communities forming a prominent part of the exercise.

The third Modi government began in June 2024 after the Lok Sabha election, so a reshuffle now would not be unprecedented simply because the government is in its third year.

Uttar Pradesh and Punjab are both heading towards Assembly elections in 2027. The BJP has just used its UP Rajya Sabha nominations to refresh its state representation, while one of its most prominent Sikh ministers has been left outside that exercise.
That does not establish that a reshuffle is imminent. But it does make the next round of Cabinet decisions considerably more interesting.