- Sushama Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri gets ticket from New Delhi constituency, Jyotiraditya from Guna
- Madhya Pradesh Ex CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest the upcoming polls from Vidhisha
Manoj Kumar Pathak
New Delhi : After days of deliberations and meetings, the Bharatiya Janata Party released its first list of 195 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha Elections on Saturday. The party has fielded Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, UP, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Union Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, Gujarat among candidates for 16 states and Union Territories. The saffron party has fielded its national secretary Anil K Antony, the son of veteran Congress leader AK Antony, from Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency in Kerala. The daughter of late Sushama Swaraj, Bansuri has been awarded with party ticket from New Delhi constituency denying renomination to the union minister Meenakshi Lekhi.
Apart from Bansuri Swaraj, the BJP has nominated new faces Kamaljit Sehrawat from West Delhi, and Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi. Another new face Praveen Khandelwal has been nominated from the Chandni Chowk seat. While Manoj Tiwari has been repeated from North East Delhi. In Delhi, the BJP has fielded four new faces out the five names declared in the first list.
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia will fight Lok Sabha polls from Guna in Madhya Pradesh. Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav to fight Lok Sabha election from Alwar. Notably, Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest the upcoming polls from Vidhisha, Madhya Pradesh. Union Minister V Muralidharan will contest from Attingal and Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar to contest from Thiruvananthapuram.
The BJP repeated Kiren Rijiju and Tapir Gao from two Arunachal Pradesh seats for Lok Sabha polls while Sarbananda Sonowal will flight the LS polls from Dibrugarh, Assam. In Gujarat, BJP fielded Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar and Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar.
The other major names include Suresh Gopi from Thrissur, Anil Antony from Pathanamthitta, Arjun Meghwal from Bikaner, Gajendrasingh Sekhawat from Jodhpur, Om Birla from Kota, Bandi Sanjay Kumar from Karimnagar, G Kishen Reddy from Secunderabad, Nishikant Dubey from Godda and Arjun Munda from Khoonti in Jharkhand.
Biplab Deb gets Tripura West, Ajay Mishra Teni Lakhimpur Kheri, Hema Malini Mathura, Smriti Irani Amethi, Sakshi Maharaj Unnao, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti Fatehpur, Ravi Kishan Gorakhpur, Nirahua Azamgarh, Locket Chatterjee Hooghly, Mahesh Sharma from GautamBuddha nagar.
“PM Modi to contest Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi, Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiran Rijiju to contest from Arunachal West, BJP MP Bishnu Pada Ray to contest from Andaman & Nicobar, BJP MP Tapir Gao to contest from Arunachal East, Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal to contest from Dibrugarh,” said BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde.
The party said it is trying to expand its reach in the country and expressed confidence in securing a clear majority in the upcoming General Election 2024. “After holding talks in various regions, the central leadership decided the names for the nominations. Out of this, a decision was reached for 195 seats with PM Modi to fight the election from Varanasi,” BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde said.
Vinod Tawade announced the candidates on – 51 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 24 from Madhya Pradesh, 15 each from Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 from Kerala, 9 seats from Telangana, 11 from Assam, 11 each from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, five from Delhi, two from Jammu and Kashmir, three from Uttarakhand, two from Arunachal Pradesh and one each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar, and Daman and Diu.
The party recently held back-to-back meetings in which the performance of the sitting MPs was thoroughly reviewed before the party decided on its warriors to shoulder the crucial Lok Sabha election 2024.
This will be the first election where NDA will be contesting against the united opposition of the INDIA bloc led by the Congress. Narendra Modi has already set a target of 370 seats for the BJP alone while the NDA expects to do ‘400 paar’.
The first list of candidates includes 34 central ministers and MoS and Lok Sabha Speaker, he added. Twenty-eight women, and 47 young leaders are featured in BJP’s first list of Lok Sabha.
