The BJP on Wednesday nominated Ashok Chavan while its ally Shiv Sena (Shinde) picked Milind Deora for the Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra, rewarding the two high-profile Congress defectors.

The parties denied Upper House renomination to more than half a dozen Union ministers, indicating they could be asked to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Chavan, a key Maharashtra Congress leader and an accused in the Adarsh Society scam, crossed over to the BJP on Tuesday. Deora quit the Congress last month — on the day Rahul Gandhi started the second leg of his Bharat Jodo Yatra — and joined the Sena led by chief minister Eknath Shinde.

Last Sunday, the BJP had fielded another Congress defector, R.P.N. Singh, from Uttar Pradesh. Singh, who was a minister in the previous UPA government, had joined the BJP over a year ago.

Rewarding the Congress crossovers handsomely is being seen as part of the ruling BJP’s strategy to render the Opposition moribund ahead of the summer Lok Sabha polls to fulfil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cry for 400-plus seats.

The defection of Chavan and Deora has dealt a body blow to the Congress in Maharashtra. Two other Opposition parties that are part of the INDIA bloc — the Sharad Pawar-led NCP and the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena — have already been crippled.

Chavan has been rewarded despite Modi’s promise in 2014 to send him to jail within six months of coming to power for the Adarsh Housing Society scam.

The strategy of securing yet another stunning victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls seems to have led the BJP leadership to sweep everything aside. The denial of Rajya Sabha renomination to over half a dozen Union ministers is also claimed to be part of the strategy.

The Union ministers have been replaced with tribal, OBC, SC and women leaders to consolidate the BJP’s electoral calculations.

BJP chief J.P. Nadda, whose term in the Upper House expires in April, was given renomination from Gujarat and not from his home state Himachal Pradesh, as the party doesn’t have the strength to get him elected from the state with the Congress now in power.

Three more new faces were fielded from Modi’s home state, cancelling out health minister Mansukh Mandaviya and fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying minister Parshottam Rupala.

The two cabinet ministers are likely to be fielded for the Lok Sabha polls from Gujarat, party insiders said.

Three other key ministers denied renomination to the Upper House were education minister Dharmendra Pradhan (elected from Madhya Pradesh), environment and labour minister Bhupendra Yadav (from Rajasthan) and micro, small and medium enterprises minister Narayan Rane (Maharashtra).

All three of them could be asked to prove their popularity by contesting Lok Sabha seats from their respective home states.