New Delhi: Slightly over a week since his photographs with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein made headlines, Hardeep Singh Puri has been named by the Bharatiya Janata Party as its candidate for the Rajya Sabha by-poll from Madhya Pradesh.Last week, a photograph released by the US Department of Justice earlier this year as part of a large dataset began circulating on social media. it showed the Union oil minister seated across a table from Epstein, with no one else visible in the frame. As The Wire noted in its report, it had raised questions about Puri’s account that he had met Epstein as part of a delegation led by his former boss at the International Peace Institute.Puri’s office had told The Wire the minister could not recall which meeting the photograph showed or whether others were present before or after it was taken. It also said that Puri had not claimed that he had never met Epstein alone.Emails released by the Justice Department earlier this year had documented multiple encounters between the two. As The Wire reported on February 1, the correspondence between Puri and Epstein spans June 2014 to June 2017 and records at least three meetings at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse.The opposition had called the episode an “international disgrace”.Earlier in October there had been speculation as to why the saffron party had not nominated Puri for another term when the party announced the names of its eight candidates for the Rajya Sabha election from Uttar Pradesh.Puri was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in 2020.