BJP drops Teli from poll list
Failing to impress, junior oil minister Rameswar Teli is out of the Lok Sabha race after the ruling BJP declined to give him an election ticket.
Teli is a Lok Sabha MP from Assam's Dibrugarh constituency, where many voters are tea garden workers. But his name was missing from the BJP's first list of 195 lower house of parliament candidates, released on March 2 (2024).
His name has been replaced for Dibrugarh by the minister for ports, shipping and waterways, Sarbananda Sonowal, who was chief minister of Assam until 2021. Sonowal, a veteran MLA and parliamentarian, is contesting Dibrugarh 20 years after he was MP for the same seat from 2004-2009.
Teli, a two-time legislator in the Assam assembly and two-time MP from Dibrugarh, is believed to be Sonowal's protégé. A source says Teli might either work for the BJP in Assam or try for election to the Rajya Sabha upper house.
"Teli has been focusing mostly on the northeast and mining," we hear. "But if the BJP wins, there's talk Sonowal might become oil minister."
Teli has been representing Assam in the oil ministry, where oil secretary Pankaj Jain is also an Assam-Meghalaya cadre IAS officer. Most ministers prefer to have IAS officers from their respective state cadres to help them.
Oil minister and former diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri, however, prefers Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers. On February 20 (2024), 2015-batch IFS officer George Thomas was appointed deputy secretary in the oil ministry.
On February 29 (2024), the cabinet's appointments committee cleared a two-year extension beyond March 19 (2024) for IFS officer and joint secretary Esha Srivastava.