The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has unveiled its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, encompassing 16 states and 2 Union Territories, with a total of 195 nominees, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi once against contesting from Varanasi.
The announced names included those for 51 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 20 in West Bengal and five in Delhi. 28 women and 47 young leaders feature in the saffron party's first list of candidates for 16 states and Union Territories, including 57 candidates from Other Backward Classes (OBC), 27 from Scheduled Castes (SC), and 17 from Scheduled Tribes (ST).
The inclusions feature 34 ministers from both the Union and state levels. This includes Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who will fight again from Kota in Rajasthan, while Home Minister Amit Shah will contest from Gandhinagar, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar.
Other Union ministers whose names have been announced by the BJP in the first list of candidates include Rajnath Singh, Mansukh Mandaviya, Jitendra Singh, Sarbananda Sonowal, Gajendra Shekhawat, Bhupender Yadav, G Kishan Reddy, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Arjun Munda.
The saffron party has re-nominated Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for the Lucknow constituency and Union Minister Smriti Irani for Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. The party has also chosen to field MoS Home Affairs Ajay Mishra Teni, Mahesh Sharma, SPS Baghel, and Sakshi Maharaj once more in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from UP. The first list also includes actor-turned-politicians Hema Malini, Ravi Kishan and Dinesh Nerahua, all of whom will fight from their respective seats in UP.
In Madhya Pradesh, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia is set to vie for the seat in his familial stronghold of Guna, while former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest from the Vidisha constituency.
Meanwhile, BJP leader Alok Sharma is slated to run for the Bhopal seat as the incumbent MP and Malegaon blast accused Pragya Singh Thakur has been dropped from the list.
The party has additionally revealed its candidates for Kerala, with Union Ministers V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrasekhar set to compete from Attingal and Thiruvananthapuram, respectively. Rajeev is likely to face Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is the incumbent MP from Thiruvananthapuram. Additionally, Anil Antony — son of Congress stalwart A K Antony — who joined the BJP from the Congress, has been fielded from Pathanamithitta in Kerala.
Announcing the list, BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde said the party is confident that it would form the government for the third term under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a much bigger mandate. He also said the party has been working on further expanding its footprint across states and also to strengthen the ruling National Democratic Alliance.
There was a major shake-up in the Delhi list as the party dropped four of its five sitting MPs. The axe fell on Ramesh Bidhuri, Parvesh Verma, Meenakshi Lekhi and Harsh Vardhan but Manoj Tiwari got to contest from North East Delhi. The party fielded Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, as its candidate for the New Delhi seat, Kamaljit Sehrawat for West Delhi, and Ramvir Singh Bidhuri for South Delhi. Additionally, Praveen Khadelwal will contest from the Chandni Chowk seat, while Manoj Tiwari has been selected for North East Delhi.
Meanwhile, former Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, Meenakshi Lekhi, Minister of State for External Affairs, and MPs Ramesh Bidhuri and Parvesh Verma have been dropped from Delhi Lok Sabha seats.
The saffron party repeats Kiren Rijiju, and Tapir Gao from two Arunachal Pradesh seats for Lok Sabha polls.
In West Bengal, state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar, union ministers Nisith Pramanik and Shantanu Thakur and Soumendu Adhikari, the brother of Suvendu Adhikari are among the first list of 20 candidates announced. Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh has been fielded from Asansol in West Bengal to take on TMC’s sitting MP Shatrughan Sinha. Asansol has a significant percentage of people of Bihar-origin and Hindi speaking voters.
In Rajasthan, LS Speaker Om Birla and four Union ministers are among the 15 out of the 25 parliamentary constituencies announced in the first list. Union ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal from Bikaner, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur and Kailash Chaudhary from Barmer are among those being repeated from their seats. Rajya Sabha MP and Union Minister Bhupendra Singh will be the party's candidate.
The party has once again picked former chief minister Vasundhara Raje's son and sitting MP Dushyant Singh as its candidate from the Jhalawar Baran seat and gave tickets to Mahendrajit Malviya and Jyoti Mirdha, who quit the Congress and joined the BJP. BJP state president and sitting Chittorgarh MP C P Joshi has been retained.
Newcomer and Paralympic gold medalist Devendra Jhajharia is the BJP candidate from Churu replacing MP Rahul Kaswan while Swami Sumedhanand Saraswati has retained his constituency of Sikar.
The Election Commission is expected to announce the poll schedule later this month and the elections are likely to be held in April-May.
The BJP won 303 seats in the 2019 polls but currently, it has 290 members in Lok Sabha for various reasons including some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls.
Modi has set a target for the BJP to win at least 370 seats on its own in this Lok Sabha election and more than 400 for the NDA.
The BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC) had met for more than five hours Thursday night and deliberated on names for their first list.
The CEC members, which included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party's national president J P Nadda and Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, had discussed the probables for states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa and Uttarakhand among others to finalise the nominees.
Before that, Shah and Nadda had met PM Modi at his residence to hold consultations. The next CEC meeting is expected to be held next week to discuss further names.
(With additional inputs from PTI, ANI, and Express News Service)
