NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to contest about 435 Lok Sabha seats, while the saffron outfit has so far released the list of candidates for 366 parliamentary constituencies.
Though the BJP had earlier planned to contest not less than 450 Lok Sabha seats in the hope that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would help the outfit garner a larger number of constituencies, the saffron outfit bartered expansion for better prospects of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The BJP had contested 432 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 general elections and had bagged 282 seats, becoming the first political outfit to gain full majority after a gap of three decades.
“The BJP most likely will be contesting about 435 seats. We have ceded space in Bihar to allies where the party is contesting on 17 seats against 31 in the 2014 polls,” said a senior BJP functionary.
The BJP also let go of expansion plans and settled for the same number of seats to contest in Punjab and Maharashtra by sticking with NDA allies, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Shiv Sena.
The BJP also stitched alliances with regional parties in Tamil Nadu for a rainbow coalition in the state, while opting to contest only a few seats. The BJP also seemingly ceded spaces to allies in north-east to gain the prospect for better strike rate for the NDA.
Meanwhile, BJP chief Amit Shah will file nomination from the Gandhinagar parliamentary constituency on Saturday.
Scores of NDA leaders, including SAD patriarch Parkash Singh Badal, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Ram Vilas Paswan, Sena supremo Uddhav Thackeray, BJP organisational secretary Ram Lal, Gujarat Chief Minister and his deputy Vijay Rupani and Nitin Patel respectively will attend the event. Shah will address a rally and take out a roadshow before filing the nomination.
BJP announces names of 11 candidates
The BJP on Friday announced 11 more candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, including three each from Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. With this list, the party has announced the names of 367 candidates so far for the upcoming seven phase Lok Sabha elections starting from April 11