New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will once again contest the upcoming polls from Varanasi Lok Sabha constituency, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announcing its first list of 195 candidates Saturday.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah will contest from Gandhinagar in Gujarat, and Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been fielded from Vidisha while Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest from Guna.
Modi’s cabinet colleague and MP Bhupender Yadav will contest from Alwar constituency, while Minister of State (MoS) Rajeev Chandrasekhar will contest from Thiruvananthapuram. Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has been fielded from Lucknow.
In the first list, the lone Muslim candidate is Calicut University’s former V-C Abdul Salam, who will contest from Kerala’s Malappuram.
Of the 195 candidates, 28 are women, 47 are below the age of 50 years, who the BJP referred to as ‘youth’, 27 candidates are from the Scheduled Castes, 18 belong to Scheduled Tribes and 57 are from Other Backward Class (OBC) community.
None of the sitting MPs have been dropped in the first list of BJP candidates. This has sparked speculation that several of the remaining sitting MPs may be dropped. Of the 29 seats for which names have not been announced, 6-7 have to go to coalition partners. V.K. Singh, Maneka Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Rita Joshi, Brij Bhushan, Rajendra Agrawal, Santosh Gangwar may be dropped.
The first list of candidates includes 34 central ministers and ministers of state, and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, BJP’s national general secretary Vinod Tawde said.
Pragya Thakur, who represents Bhopal constituency, has been dropped. In her place, the party has fielded MP Alok Sharma. According to sources, the party had received several complaints regarding Thakur who was also not made a star campaigner for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections.
The BJP has declared 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 Jammu and Kashmir, 3 from Uttarakhand, 2 from Arunachal Pradesh and 1 each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar and Daman and Diu.
Brijmohan Aggarwal has been fielded from Raipur and Vijay Baghel from Durg in Chhattisgarh.
In West Bengal, one sitting MP has been dropped from Alipurduar. John Barla was also MoS in the Modi cabinet. Manoj Tigga, MLA and chief whip in the Vidhan Sabha, has been given a ticket instead. In Ghatal, the BJP has fielded actor and sitting MLA Hiran after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced Bengali actor Dev’s name from the same constituency. A total of three sitting MLAs have been given LS tickets. Suvendu Adhikari’s brother Soumendu Adhikari has been given a ticket from Kanthi.
Nisith Pramanik has been fielded from Cooch Behar, Locket Chhatterjee from Hooghly, and Anirban Ganguly from Jadavpur. The BJP has won 18 seats with 40.6% votes in Bengal in the last Lok Sabha polls.
The BJP is seeking a third tenure with a focus on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘guarantees’. In 2019, the BJP’s first list of 180-odd candidates had been announced on 21 March which was over 10 days after the Model of Code Conduct (MCC) announcement.
The party held a meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC) attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday evening which lasted a couple of hours and ended at 3.30 am.
The meeting saw discussions on Lok Sabha seats across approximately 17 states.
The NDA is pitted against the INDIA alliance which has been focussing on highlighting caste census and issues of unemployment, inflation among others.
“The BJP is contesting this election with a pledge of ‘iss baar BJP 370 aur NDA 400 paar’. The focus is not only to increase our footprint in states but at the same time to strengthen the NDA alliance. After a lot of detailed discussions and consulting the states it has been decided to release a list of 195 candidates,” said BJP’s national general secretary Vinod Tawade.
In a post on X, Modi thanked the party for nominating him once again.
I thank the @BJP4India leadership and bow to the crores of selfless Party Karyakartas for their constant faith in me. I look forward to serving my sisters and brothers of Kashi for the third time.
In 2014, I went to Kashi with a commitment to fulfil people’s dreams and empower…
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 2, 2024
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Big changes in Delhi
In Delhi, which has seven Lok Sabha seats, the BJP has gone for big changes — it has dropped four sitting MPs in the list of five declared Saturday. Manoj Tiwari is the only sitting MP who has been retained.
Praveen Khandelwal, general secretary of the Confederation of All India Traders has been fielded in place of party leader Harsh Vardhan. In place of MoS Meenakshi Lekhi, the BJP has given a ticket to Bansuri Swaraj, the daughter of late Sushma Swaraj. In place of Pravesh Verma, the party has fielded former councillor Kamaljeet Sehrawat, and from South Delhi it has fielded Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Delhi MLA and Leader of Opposition in place of Ramesh Bidhuri. The party is yet to declare candidates for East and North West Delhi, represented by Gautam Gambhir and Hans Raj Hans. ThePrint had reported that BJP was looking to replace the majority of the sitting MLAs fearing ‘massive’ anti-incumbency against them.
The Aam Aadmi Party and Congress are contesting the seven Lok Sabha seats under an alliance and have already declared a list of candidates.
Suresh Gopi, Bandi Sanjay fielded in southern states
The party, which is trying to increase its footprint in southern states has fielded Suresh Gopi from Thrissur, Anil K Antony who quit the Congress and joined BJP will contest from Pathanamthitta, and V Muraleedharan from Attingal. The party is yet to declare candidates from Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha among others.
In Rajasthan, the party has fielded Arjun Ram Meghwal, Bhupender Yadav from Alwar, Jyoti Mirdha from Nagaur, P.P. Chaudhary from Pali, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur, Kailash Choudhary from Barmer, C.P. Joshi from Chittorgarh, Om Birla from Kota and Dushyant Singh, the sitting MP and son of Vasundhara Raje Scindia, from Jhalawar-Baran.
In Telangana, the party has fielded Bandi Sanjay Kumar from Karimnagar, Eatala Rajender from Malkajgiri, G Kishan Reddy from Secunderabad.
Former chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb has been fielded from Tripura West.
In Uttar Pradesh, the party has fielded Sanjeev Balyan from Muzaffarnagar, Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddh Nagar, Hema Malini from Mathura. She has represented Mathura constituency since 2014.
MoS Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ has been fielded from Kheri that had witnessed the farmers’ protest in Lakhimpur Kheri.
Sakshi Maharaj has been fielded from Unnao, Smriti Irani from Amethi, and Lallu Singh from Faizabad constituency which includes Ayodhya assembly constituency.
“The list has been prepared after a lot of discussions. A few MPs from Rajya Sabha have been fielded this time. Winnability is the sole criteria and for this some sitting MPs have been changed. The list has a sizeable number of SC, ST and OBC candidates which reflects the party’s vision of giving representation to all sections of the society,” said a senior BJP leader.
While 12 sitting MPs have been changed in Madhya Pradesh, in Rajasthan the figure stands at 7, at 5 in Gujarat, among others.
Stern message to some
In dropping Pragya Thakur, Ramesh Bidhuri and Pravesh Singh Verma, the BJP seems to have given a ‘stern’ message to leaders engaging in controversial speeches.
“Last year in the Parliament, Bidhuri had made a controversial speech abusing MP Danish Ali. PM Modi himself had not liked Thakur’s comment of celebrating Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi. Pravesh Verma is also known for his controversial comments. All of them have been dropped,” said a senior party functionary.
Of the 195 seats that the BJP declared Saturday, it had won 155 in 2019. According to party sources, tickets have been denied to over 20 percent of the sitting MPs.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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Fielding a Muslim candidate from Kerala and dropping Ms Pragya Thakur are both praiseworthy decisions.