New Delhi: In its 10th list of 39 candidates for Lok Sabha seats across Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal released Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has swapped the constituencies of union minister Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi while fielding Uttar Pradesh minister and MLA, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, from Allahabad.
Maneka, who was keen to contest from Karnal in Haryana, will now contest from her son’s seat of Sultanpur while Varun will fight the polls from her seat of Pilibhit.
According to a well-placed source in the party who did not wish to be identified, the decision was taken given Varun’s “nervousness about his seat” and because it was felt that “Maneka will be able to perform well in Sultanpur”.
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Bahuguna Joshi, who was a top Congress leader in Uttar Pradesh but who switched over to the BJP in 2016, is in the fray as well. She will contest from Allahabad (Prayagraj), currently represented by the party’s Shyama Charan Gupta.
Joshi is a minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet and was inducted after she beat Aparna Yadav, the daughter-in-law of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav from Lucknow Cantt constituency in the 2017 assembly elections.
Former Samajwadi Party leader Jaya Prada, who joined the BJP Tuesday, will contest against strongman Azam Khan from Rampur.
Another defector — former Congress leader Jagdambika Pal — is being fielded from his current seat Domariyaganj yet again. Minister of State in the centre Manoj Sinha will represent Ghazipur again.
In West Bengal, the party has fielded its second Muslim candidate in the state with Humayun Kabir, again a defector, set to contest from Murshidabad. Earlier, the party had handed the Jangipur ticket to Mafuja Khatun.
With this list, BJP has so far declared the names of 352 candidates.
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