Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri has been named as the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) official candidate for the upcoming Rajya Sabha by-election from Madhya Pradesh.
The Upper House seat fell vacant following the resignation of Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L. Murugan. The by-election is scheduled to take place on November 12, 2026.
Transition from Uttar Pradesh to Madhya Pradesh
Puri’s current term as a Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament representing Uttar Pradesh is slated to conclude in November. Earlier this month, the BJP opted not to renominate him from Uttar Pradesh, choosing instead to field eight new faces for the state’s recent biennial Upper House polls. All 10 Rajya Sabha candidates from Uttar Pradesh—comprising eight from the BJP and two from the Samajwadi Party—were elected unopposed.
The newly announced Madhya Pradesh bypoll vacancy arose after L. Murugan resigned from both the Union Council of Ministers and his Rajya Sabha seat, despite his term running through 2030. In his resignation letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Murugan stated that he stepped down to focus intensively on political developments and organizational work in Tamil Nadu.
