Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from his sitting Lok Sabha seat- Varanasi, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Union Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar and Union Minister Smriti Irani from Amethi Lok Sabha seat. BJP on Saturday (2nd March 2024) announced the first list of its 195 candidates for 16 States and two Union Territories for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The names of the candidates were finalised by the BJP Central Election Committee for 51 Lok Sabha 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 one each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar and Daman and Diu.
Announcing the names of the candidates, BJP General Secretary Vinod Tawde said in New Delhi that the first list includes the names of 34 Central Ministers and Ministers of State. He added that out of the 195 candidates, 28 of them are women, 47 candidates are under the age of 50, 27 candidates belong to Scheduled Castes, 18 are Scheduled Tribes and 57 are representing OBC community. Mr Tawde informed that Union Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will be contesting from Porbandar and Parshottam Rupala from Rajlkot seats in Gujarat while Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest from Guna and Former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha seat in Madhya Pradesh.
The other names include Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal who will fight from Bikaner seat, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur seat and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota seat.
In Delhi, out of 7 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP has announced the names on 5 seats. It has fielded Praveen Khadelwal from Chandni Chowk seat, Manoj Tiwari from North East Delhi, Bansuri Swaraj, the daughter of former Union Minister Sushma Swaraj, from New Delhi seat, Kamaljeet Sehrawat from West Delhi and Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi seat.
Union Ministers Sarbananda Sonowal will contest from Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat in Assam, Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat, Arjun Munda from Khunti seat and Annapurna Devi from Kodarma seat in Jharkhand while Rajiv Chandrasekhar will be the party candidate from Thiruvananthapuram seat in Kerala. Former Tripura Chief Minister Biblab Kumar Deb will contest from Tripura West. In Uttrar Pradesh, the list includes the names of Union Ministers Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli seat, Satyapal Singh Baghel from Agra and Sanjeev Kumar Balyan from Muzaffarnagar seat while Hema Malini will be contesting from her sitting seat-Matura and Ravi Kishan from Gorakhpur.
In West Bengal, the BJP has fielded Union Minister Nisith Pramanik from Cooch Behar, Locket Chatterjee from Hooghly seat and Pawan Singh from Asansol Lok Sabha seat.
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