BJP likely to drop Shatrughan Sinha from Patna Sahib & field Ravi Shankar Prasad instead

Prasad's name was discussed in the BJP's central election committee in New Delhi which was attended by party chief Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

File photo of Shatrughan Sinha | @ShatrughanSinha/Twitter

New Delhi: The BJP is set to drop sitting MP from Patna Sahib Shatrughan Sinha and he is likely to be replaced by Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, sources said Saturday.

Prasad’s name was discussed in the BJP’s central election committee here which was attended by party chief Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Shatrughan Sinha has been critical of the party’s top leadership on several occasions in the past.

Deliberations continued till late in the night and the name of Rajya Sabha MP R K Sinha was also discussed for the Patna Sahib seat.

The meeting was also attended by other senior leaders, Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi and party’s Bihar unit chief Nityanand Rai.

Rebel BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha is likely to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket from a ‘city constituency’ in Uttar Pradesh, top sources in the SP have told ThePrint.

Talks between the actor-turned-politician and the party are still underway and a formal announcement is yet to be made, but a senior SP leader said that it was only a matter of time.

“The seat is yet to be formalised and talks are still going on, but he will contest on a Samajwadi Party ticket from UP. The party is inclined towards fielding him from one of the city constituencies,” the leader said.

This means Sinha will be one of the SP’s 37 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, under the terms of its alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. Mayawati’s BSP is set to contest 38 seats, while Ajit Singh’s RLD will put up candidates in Mathura, Muzaffarnagar and its home turf of Baghpat. The alliance will not contest the Congress bastions of Amethi and Rae Bareli.

Sinha had won Patna Sahib by a margin of more than one lakh votes in 2014. He was a union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s NDA government, in charge of health and family welfare in 2002-03, and of shipping in 2003-04.