The BJP has named Rameswar Teli and Mission Ranjan Das from Assam to contest in the upcoming Rajya Sabha bye-elections. They are among nine names put forward by the party, according to an official notification on Tuesday.

While Rameswar Teli is a former Lok Sabha MP from Dibrugarh and also served as a Minister of State in the Modi 2.0 government, Mission Ranjan Das is a former MLA from Karimganj and serving as the chairman of Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC).

The Election Commission of India has scheduled the upcoming bye-elections to fill up 12 vacant seats of the Rajya Sabha for September 3. This was necessitated by several prominent leaders who shifted to the Lok Sabha after the recent general elections. Among them are the seats of Union Ministers Piyush Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal, and Jyotiraditya Scindia, all of whom secured positions in the Lok Sabha.

Besides them, the other members who traded a seat in the Rajya Sabha for the Lok Sabha are BJP's Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, Vivek Thakur, Udayanraje Bhosle, and Biplab Kumar Deb; RJD's Misha Bharti; Deepender Singh Hooda and K C Venugopal of the Congress.

Meanwhile, the BJP named Rajib Bhattacharjee from Tripura, Mamata Mohanta from Odisha, Manan Kumar Mishra from Bihar, Kiran Choudhary from Haryana, George Kurian from Madhya Pradesh, Dhairyashil Patil from Maharashtra, and Ravneet Singh Bittu from Rajasthan.

Notably, the ECI has stipulated that only "integrated violet color sketch pens with a specific pre-determined specification" provided by the returning officer will be used to mark preferences on ballot papers. This measure is intended to maintain consistency and minimize the risk of discrepancies or tampering during the voting process.