LUCKNOW: With the most high profile name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi repeated as BJP candidate from Varanasi, a seat which he has been representing in Lok Sabha since 2014, the ruling party's first list, released on Saturday evening, comprised of 51 names of candidates given the ticket across the state.
There were no major surprises as the party has apparently trusted the old guard, while reposing faith in 44 sitting MPs including Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Smriti Irani from Amethi and Hema Malini, who was accused of abandoning her constituency, from Mathura.
The party has also repeated three losing candidates of 2019 besides going for four new faces in Shravasti, Jaunpur, Ambedkarnagar and Nagina.
The three losing candidates of 2019 include Parmeshawar Saini from Sambhal, Neelam Sonkar from Lalganj and Kanwar Singh Tanwar from Amroha. While Sambhal and Amroha in western UP were lost to SP and BSP respectively, in 2019, Lalganj in eastern UP was bagged by the BSP.
Moreover, the most controversial re-nomination is that of Ajay Mishra Teni, the Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son Ashish's name was involved when a vehicle mowed down farmers during the 2020-21 farmers protest in Lakhimpur Kheri.
Teni will re-contest from the Kheri Lok Sabha constituency. The controversy notwithstanding, the BJP won all the eight seats of Lakhimpur Kheri district, in the 2022 UP assembly polls.
Four new faces introduced in battlefield UP include Saket Mishra, the investment banker and MLC, from Shravasti. Mishra is also the son of retd IAS officer Nripendra Mishra who is currently the chairman of Ram Mandir Construction Committee.
The second is Ambedkar Nagar where the party has fielded Ritesh Pandey, the sitting MP, who joined the BJP last month after quitting the BSP.
Another new candidate Kripa Shankar Singh has been chosen to test the waters in Jaunpur. Singh is the former home minister of Maharashtra and has been called back to UP, his native state to contest the election. He had joined the BJP in 2021 quitting Congress.
Similarly, the party has given to Om Kumar from the reserved seat of Nagina in western UP. Kumar is a three-time MLA from an assembly segment in Bijnor.
Although 29 remaining names will come in forthcoming lists, the first list from UP clearly shows that the BJP doesn't want to experiment in the politically crucial Hindi heartland state, which sends 80 - the highest among all states - MPs to Lok Sabha.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP had won 62 of the 80 seats braving the SP-BSP grand alliance with a strike rate of 80 per cent in Uttar Pradesh.
