Minister George Kurian resigns as BJP skips him for Rajya Sabha term

2 min readUpdated: Jun 23, 2026 10:24 AM IST

George Kurian from the Union Council of Ministers resigns on Tuesday. (Source: File)

Veteran BJP leader George Kurian today resigned as a Union Minister after his six-year term in the Rajya Sabha expired and the party did not renominate him to the Upper House of Parliament. The Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a statement that President Droupadi Murmu has accepted Kurian’s resignation under clause (2) of Article 75 of the Constitution on the advice of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Kurian, 65, is from Kottayam in Kerala and has earlier served as vice-president of the BJP’s unit in the southern state. A lawyer, he has been a familiar face on TV debates and was often seen translating speeches of Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah into Malayalam during their visits to Kerala. He was inducted into the Union cabinet in 2024 in a move that was seen as the BJP’s outreach to the Christian community to expand its footprint in Kerala.

Kurian belongs to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, one of the most prominent Christian churches in Kerala. He has been with the BJP since its formation in 1980 and earlier served as a state general secretary, the national secretary of the Bharatiya Yuva Morcha, and the party’s national executive body.

In the 2016 Kerala polls, Kurian unsuccessfully contested against then Chief Minister and Congress candidate Oommen Chandy in Puthuppally. He had served as BJP veteran O Rajagopal’s officer on special duty when he was Union minister in the Vajpayee government from 1999 to 2004.

According to sources in the BJP, Kurian was not informed beforehand that he would not be renominated to the Rajya Sabha this year. So, he was in for a surprise when the list of 11 candidates was released on June 4. The Kerala leader has ended up facing a fate similar to former Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, who had to resign a day before his Rajya Sabha term ended because the party did not renominate him.

Kurian was a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh. This time, the BJP nominated Tarun Chugh and Rajneesh Agrawal to the Upper House from the heartland state.