BJP Files Puri for MP Rajya Sabha; Epstein Photographs Remain Under “Professional Networking”
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday confirmed that Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri will continue in the Rajya Sabha, this time from Madhya Pradesh, after his name was cleared for the November 12 by-election. The seat opened following the resignation of L. Murugan. Puri’s existing term from Uttar Pradesh ends on November 25, and the party had not renominated him from that state earlier. With the BJP’s majority in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, the outcome is not expected to involve suspense.
The timing has drawn attention. A little over a week earlier, photographs from the United States Department of Justice Epstein files began circulating widely. Dataset 9, released in January 2026, includes multiple images of Puri seated across a table from Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender. No other person appears in the frames. The photographs date to the years when Puri was associated with the International Peace Institute in New York, after his Foreign Service career and before he joined the Union Cabinet in 2017.
The International Peace Institute is a New York-based independent think tank focused on multilateralism and conflict resolution. During the relevant period it was headed by Norwegian diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen, who later apologised for his own links to Epstein. Puri has described his meetings with Epstein as professional. He has said he encountered Epstein three or four times in connection with the Institute and the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, that the contacts involved networking (including an introduction related to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman), and that they had nothing to do with Epstein’s criminal cases. Emails released as part of the same Justice Department files document correspondence between June 2014 and June 2017 and record at least three scheduled visits to Epstein’s Manhattan residence—on 4 February 2015, 6 January 2016 and 19 May 2017. One other appointment was cancelled.
When the photographs resurfaced, Puri’s office stated that he could not recall the precise meeting shown or whether others had been present before or after the camera was used. The office also noted that he had not claimed he never met Epstein without additional people present, and that the first encounter occurred as part of a delegation led by Rød-Larsen. Opposition figures have pointed to the images and the emails and asked for further clarification on the characterisation of the encounters. Puri has repeatedly stated that he had no involvement in or knowledge of Epstein’s offences.
Congress leader Brijendra Singh, commenting on the photographs in a recent interview, described them as one in a series that could not be suppressed indefinitely. He said India appeared to be the only country in which persons named in the Epstein files faced no consequences, that the government had stonewalled earlier questions, and that Puri should have been asked to resign when the matter first surfaced. Singh added that the continued presence of the minister suggested, in his view, that “they are all hand-in-gloves,” and that the episode illustrated the risks of conducting diplomatic outreach through private channels.
In political terms, the sequence is straightforward: photographs of a sitting minister with a convicted sex offender circulate; the minister’s office classifies the meetings as professional networking conducted years earlier through a New York think tank; an opposition MP calls for accountability; the party proceeds with a nomination that keeps him in Parliament and in the Cabinet. No court or official inquiry in India or the United States has linked Puri to Epstein’s crimes. The BJP has not issued a public statement connecting the photographs to the candidature. The nomination process continues, with the last date for filing papers on 2 November. In the language of contemporary public life, the matter has been placed under the heading of past professional contacts, and the Rajya Sabha seat from Madhya Pradesh is expected to be filled without further procedural difficulty.
This is a satirical commentary based solely on publicly reported facts, official releases, and attributed statements.
