New Delhi: Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s sole Muslim representative in the Union Cabinet, does not figure in the party's list of nominees for the Rajya Sabha biennial election scheduled for June 10.
Tuesday was the last day for filing nominations. Naqvi retires from the Upper House on July 7, 2022. Sources informed ANI that the BJP has fixed a maximum of three terms in the Rajya Sabha for all its party leaders, and Naqvi is currently finishing his third term in the Upper House.
The sources further added that Naqvi, who hails from Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, may be fielded as a candidate by the BJP for the ensuing bypoll to the Lok Sabha seat vacated by Azam Khan. The Rampur bypoll is scheduled to take place on June 23 this year.
There is also speculation that the minority affairs minister will be made a governor as several states have gubernatorial vacancies for some time now. With the BJP denying a renomination to Naqvi to the Upper House, and no Rajya Sabha renomination either for Sayyed Zafar Islam or MJ Akbar -- both of whom are also completing their tenures soon -- the party now has no Muslim member of Parliament from either House. Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who started his career as a student leader, went to jail during the 1975 Emergency and has been associated with the BJP since its Jan Sangh days. After an unsuccessful stint in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections in 1980, Naqvi won a Lok Sabha seat in 1998 and went on to become the minister for information and broadcasting in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Naqvi has been the minority affairs minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet since 2014.—ANI