Rajya Sabha MPs are the nominated members to the Upper House of the Parliament and have time and again taken charge of important ministries in the government. Electing Rajya Sabha MPs as Cabinet Ministers has been a practice prevalent among the governments and is mostly done in order to have their trusted members in the core committee.
These non-elected members of the cabinet are more of a mind of the party. They may not be great in electoral politics but are the forefronts of the party politics at the national level. They make policies, nurture them and implement them. From 1999 to 2014 at least a minimum of 4-5 members of Rajya Sabha have been given charge of important ministries in the Lok Sabha. The Vajpayee government had 4 sitting Rajya Sabha MPs in its cabinet including the defence minister George Fernandez while the first Ministry of Manmohan Singh had 8 sitting Rajya Sabha MPs as Cabinet Ministers.
The Ex-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself was the appointed Rajya Sabha member from Assam, along with prominent members like Kapil Sibal; Minister of Science & Technology and Home Minister Shivraj Patil. While Manmohan Singh and Kapil Sibal never contested elections, Shivraj Patil lost to the BJP candidate in 2004 and yet they were in charge of important ministries; owing to their experiences as policymakers and the understanding of the governance of the country.
Following the league, the second ministry of Manmohan Singh also had 7 sitting Rajya Sabha MPs elected as Cabinet Ministers which included the Defence Minister A.K.Antony, Minister of Health & Family Welfare Ghulam Nabi Azad who is a Rajya Sabha MP from J&K, both of whom are highly experienced and prolific politicians, along with others.
The Narendra Modi Council of Ministers also has many Rajya Sabha MPs as Cabinet Ministers; the most prominent being Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, a prolific politician and lawyer, and Minister of Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. Arun Jaitley along with Textiles Minister Smriti Irani lost the general elections in their respective constituencies but yet continue to hold major offices in the cabinet.
However, there have been many times when a party has been criticised for its choice of Cabinet Ministers, giving the citation of good relations as criteria of being appointed as ministers. It has always been a two-way deal, while some of the prolific minds of the country and great policymakers are nominated to the council at the same time some unqualified and incompetent members also make it to the list.