NEW DELHI: Several sitting members of Parliament (MPs) of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have in recent days expressed their ‘unwillingness’ to contest in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and requested the party’s national president J P Nadda to relieve them of their electoral duties or not consider their names for candidature.
The matter has sparked some interest in the political corridors of Delhi. Just days before the BJP released its first list, the party’s sitting MP from East Delhi and former cricketer Gautam Gambhir had asked Nadda to relieve him of electoral responsibilities so that he could focus on his upcoming cricket commitments.
Soon afterwards, the BJP’s sitting MP from Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh Jayant Sinha wrote on X that he had requested the party chief to relieve him of direct electoral responsibilities.
“I have requested Hon’ble party president JP Nadda ji to relieve me of my direct electoral duties so that I can focus my efforts on combating global climate change in Bharat and around the world,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, adding that he would continue to work with party on economic and other issues. He has represented the Hazaribagh constituency of Jharkhand for the past 10 years.
On Sunday, the day when the BJP issued its fifth list of 111 candidates, two sitting MPs Gen (retd) V K Singh from Ghaziabad and Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur wrote to the party chief expressing their unwillingness to contest in the upcoming elections.
Similarly, Vadodara MP Ranjana Bhatt expressed her unwillingness to contest this time. Curiously, new candidate Bhikhaji Thakr from Sabarkantha LS seat in Gujarat said he won’t be able to contest after the party gave him the ticket. The party then fielded another candidate.
Harsh Vardhan, a sitting MP from Delhi’s Chandani Chowk, quit active politics a day after the party made businessman Praveen Khandelwal as its nominee. Vardhan was a two-time MP from this seat. On Sunday, the party dropped two prominent Union ministers namely Ashwini Kumar Choubey, who is the sitting MP from Buxar in Bihar and Gen Singh, sitting MP from Ghaziabad.
Conveying Holi wishes, Choubey in a post on ‘X’ on Monday dropped a very cryptic hint of his disappointment. He wrote, “The festival symbolises the victory of good over evil. Truth and struggle have been a part of my life. Truth may be troubled, not defeated. All well-wishers and supporters are requested to maintain patience. Everything will be fine”.
BJP’s fifth list
37 sitting MPs dropped in the BJP’s fifth list, which featured many first-time candidates like Kangana Ranaut and Arun Govil
9 from Uttar Pradesh, five from Gujarat, four from Odisha and three each from Bihar, Karnataka and Jharkhand among the 37
Six more names for Gujarat
The ruling BJP announced the names of six candidates for Lok Sabha polls from Gujarat, including new faces for Vadodara and Sabarkantha where the party nominees earlier withdrew from the fray
