New Delhi: Both Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress have announced their initial lists of candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls on June 10, necessitated by the retirement of 57 members. The BJP, in its two lists of 18 candidates from various states, has announced the candidature of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman from Karnataka and Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal from Maharashtra. However, senior leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s name has been left out until now. Naqvi is expected to be included in the second list of names from Uttar Pradesh where BJP is expected to get eight out of 11 seats, or from the one seat in Madhya Pradesh. Among its candidates in Uttar Pradesh, BJP has fielded its former state chief Laxmikant Bajpai and Radha Mohan Agarwal who had vacated his legislative assembly seat, Gorakhpur, for chief minister Adityanath. Others in the fray from UP are Surendra Singh Nagar, who will be contesting again, Baburam Nishad, Darshan Singh, and Sangeeta Yadav.The saffron party has nominated Dhananjay Mahadik as its third candidate from Maharashtra, where the party has the strength to get only two unopposed seats in the six seats which will be up for elections. The announcement of a third candidate means that a tough contest is in the cards in the state. Jharkhand BJP general secretary Aditya Sahu has also been announced as the party candidate from the state. Kalpana Saini, the party’s OBC front’s chief in Uttarakhand, has been nominated as the BJP candidate from the hill state. Ghanshyam Tiwari, who had switched over to the Congress after rebelling against then BJP chief minister Vasundhara Raje, was picked from Rajasthan to represent the BJP in the Upper House. Krishan Lal Panwar will be contesting from Haryana. The party will also be represented by Satish Chandra Dubey and Shambhi Sharan Patel in the two seats where it will win unopposed from Bihar. The two other sure-shot seats in BJP ally Janata Dal (United)’s share have, however, gone to Aneel Hegde and Kheru Mahto – JD(U)’s Jharkhand unit chief – instead of sitting Union minister R.C.P Singh whose term has also ended. Speculations are rife in Bihar that Singh is now out of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s favour and may end up losing his ministerial position as a result of not having been given a Rajya Sabha position. Congress, on the other hand, has picked mostly Gandhi loyalists for the upcoming polls. In its list of 10 candidates, the Congress is sure to win at least nine. The grand old party has renominated only three of its sitting MPs – P. Chidambaram, Jairam Ramesh and Vivek Tankha – and has denied leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma, both part of the dissenting group of leaders, as its candidates. As expected, Chidambaram will represent his party from Tamil Nadu, Ramesh from Karnataka, and Tankha from his Madhya Pradesh. However, much resentment was reported among ranks as the remaining seven in the list do not belong to the states from which they have been nominated. AICC general secretaries Randeep Singh Surjewala and Mukul Wasnik, and CWC member Pramod Tiwari have been nominated from Uttar Pradesh, Rajeev Shukla and Ranjeet Ranjan from Chhattisgarh, Imran Pratapgarhi from Maharashtra, and Ajay Maken from Haryana. Some of the leaders like Pawan Khera, Nagma and others who were expecting to be selected also expressed their dissatisfaction on Twitter. Wasnik and Tankha are the only two leaders who were part of the dissenting ‘G-23’ group but are now considered to have veered towards the Gandhis. Kapil Sibal, the most-vocal dissenter against Gandhis, has already left the party and has filed his nomination as an independent candidate with the support of Samajwadi Party. The Akhilesh Yadav-led party also extended support to ally Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Jayant Chaudhary’s nomination on Monday.Unopposed candidates will be declared winners on June 3, while others in the fray will be elected on June 10.