NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be contesting from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi seat in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha polls while home minister Amit Shah will fight from Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde said on Saturday.
Check full list below:
Check full list below:
The BJP on Saturday released its first list of 195 candidates for the general elections after days of back-to-back late night meetings.
Hoping to get a head start advantage, the ruling party’s list comes even before the Election Commission has notified the dates for the Lok Sabha polls.
Significantly, BJP leader Alok Sharma will contest from Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, and Pragya Singh Thakur has been dropped.
Key takeaways from the list
- The party announced candidates for 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, 5 from Delhi, 2 from J&K, 3 from Uttarakhand, 2 from Arunachal Pradesh and 1 each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman & Nicobar and Daman & Diu.
- The first list of candidates includes 34 central ministers and ministers of state, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and two former chief ministers.
- Health minister Mansukh Mandaviya to contest from Gujarat’s Porbandar.
- The BJP also announced 28 women, 47 young leaders under the age of 50 in BJP’s first list of Lok Sabha candidates for 16 states and Union Territories.
- The list also has 27 SC candidates and 18 ST candidates. “We are fielding 57 OBC candidates out of these 195 candidates,” added Tawde.
- BJP has repeated Kiren Rijiju, Tapir Gao from two Arunachal Pradesh seats for the Lok Sabha polls.
- Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia to fight Lok Sabha polls from Guna in Madhya Pradesh
- Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav to fight Lok Sabha election from Alwar in Rajasthan.
- Shivraj Singh Chouhan to contest from MP’s Vidhisha.
- Union Minister V Muralidharan to contest from Attingal & Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar to contest from Thiruvananthapuram.
- Defence minister Rajnath Singh to contest from Lucknow.
- The BJP announced names for 5 of 7 seats in Delhi. The party has fielded Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi, Kamaljit Sehrawat from West Delhi, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi, Praveen Khadelwal from Chandni Chowk, and Manoj Tiwari from North East Delhi.
- Ramesh Bidhuri, Parvesh Verma, Meenakshi Lekhi, Harsh Vardhan dropped from Delhi LS seats
- Former chief minister Biplab Deb fielded from Tripura.
- Former Assam CM and present shipping minister Sarbananda sonowal named BJP candidate for Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat.
- Smriti Irani to fight from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh.
- BJP repeats Hema Malini, Ajay Mishra Teni, Mahesh Sharma, SPS Baghel, Sakshi Maharaj from Uttar Pradesh in LS polls.
The BJP’s Central Election Committee (CEC) met on Thursday night as its members, including PM Modi, held deliberations to finalise the first list for the Lok Sabha polls, which are expected to be held in April-May.
(This is a developing story)
Source Agencies
