New Delhi: With the appointment of Thaawarchand Gehlot as governor of Karnataka, the Rajya Sabha needs a new leader of house to fill up his place ahead of the monsoon session that commences from July 19.
Names of senior BJP leaders and some union ministers have started doing the rounds as possible replacement. Names of Piyush Goyal, Nirmala Sitharaman, Prakash Javadekar, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi are among the frontrunners.
Sources said that names of senior party leader Bhupender Yadav, former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Sushil Kumar Modi and Sudhanshu Trivedi are also doing rounds in the party circle.
A BJP insider said that Trivedi can be appointed as leader of house with an eye on next year assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh.
In June 2019, Gehlot was appointed leader of house in the Rajya Sabha in place of former union Minister Arun Jaitley, who had then opted out due to health reasons.
Gehlot is a prominent Scheduled Caste face of the saffron party. He is a member of BJP's parliamentary board, highest decision making body of the party. A senior party functionary said that the party has almost two weeks' time to appoint a new leader of house in Rajya Sabha and it will be done on time before the start of parliament session.
Another party leader pointed out that the BJP has many leaders with experience of parliamentary procedure and anyone from them can be appointed for the position of leader of house in Rajya Sabha.
The Leader of House deals with procedural matters relating to the business of the House and advises the House if any difficulty arises.
