AMN/
The President of India Paranab Mukherjee today nominated Swapan Das Gupta, Navjot Singh Sidhu, Dr. Subramanian Swamy, Narendra Jadhav, Suresh Gopi and Ms. Mary Kom to the Rajya Sabha. They have been nominated following recommendation from Prime minister Narendra Modi led NDA government at centre.
Swapan Dasgupta is senior journalists and has been a leading defender of the BJP in media. He is considered close to Jaitley, Dasgupta’s name has been doing rounds for several sensitive postings since the BJP-led government took over at the Centre in 2014.
Suresh Gopi, a Malayalam action hero, has been warming up to the BJP since 2013, when the actor had met Narendra Modi, the then BJP’s prime ministerial candidate. He is one of the star campaigners of the BJP in Kerala.
Boxing champion Mary Kom, hailing from north-east, is nominated keeping in view representation from eastern states as well as her pan-India popularity after actress Priyanka Chopra played Kom in a 2014 biopic, sources said.
Narendra Jadhav, a noted economist, was member of Congress president Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council in the previous regime. An authority on BR Ambedkar, he has developed an independent rapport with Modi, leading to his nomination.
Subramanian Swamy, a Harvard-educated economist, was one of the petitioners in the Spectrum scam that marked the decline of the Congress-led UPA, and is also a known critic of finance minister Arun Jaitley.