BJP Releases 1st List of 195 Candidates for Lok Sabha Polls; PM Modi to Contest from Varanasi

BJP's first list of candidates for 2024 Lok Sabha elections includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will contest from Varanasi once again, Amit Shah, who will contest from Gandhinagar, Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and Madhya Pradesh former CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha. The list has 47 candidates below 50 years of age, 28 female, 27 SC, 18 ST and 57 OBC candidates.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced on Saturday as it released its first list of 195 candidates.

34 Union Ministers including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, and Smriti Irani, two former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) and Biplab Deb (Tripura) -- and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla are among those on the list that was released by the party in a press conference in the national capital.

While PM Modi will contest again from Varanasi, Home Minister Amit Shah will contest from Gandhinagar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow. Speaker Om Birla will fight from Kota.

Announcing the list, BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde said the party is confident that it would form the government for the third term under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a much bigger mandate. He also said that the party has been working on further expanding its footprint across various states and also to strengthen the National Democratic Alliance.

In the first list, the saffron party announced candidates for 51 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, 20 in West Bengal, 24 in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat 15, Rajasthan 15, Kerala 12, Telangana 09, Assam 11, Jharkhand 11, Chhattisgarh 11, Delhi 05, Jammu & Kashmir 2, Uttarakhand 3, Arunachal Pradesh 2, Goa 1, Tripura 1, Andaman Nicobar 1, and Daman and Diu 1.

In Delhi, Ramesh Bidhuri, Parvesh Verma, Meenakshi Lekhi and Harsh Vardhan were dropped from their respective seats, while Sadhvi Pragya Thakur was also dropped from her Bhopal seat. Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, will make her poll debut from the New Delhi seat, Kamaljeet Sehrawat will contest from the from West Delhi, MLA Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi, Praveen Khadelwal from Chandni Chowk, while Manoj Tiwari has been retained from the North East Delhi constituency. Besides Lekhi, John Barla is another Union minister who has been dropped from their seat.

There are 47 candidates on the list who are less than 50 years of age. 27 SC candidates, 18 ST candidates and 57 OBC candidates also figure on it. Some other key names on the list include: Nitin Gadkari (Nagpur), Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Vidisha), Kiren Rijiju (Arunachal West), Mansukh Mandaviya (Porbandar), Smriti Irani (Amethi), Arjun Ram Meghawal (Bikaner), Jyotiraditya Scindia (Guna), Vijay Baghel (Durg), Hema Malini (Mathura), Nishikant Dubey (Godda), Gajendra Shekhawat (Jodhpur), Bhupendra Yadav (Alwar), G Kishan Reddy (Secunderabad), Rajeev Chandrasekhar (Thiruvananthapuram), and Sorbananda Sonowal (Dibrugarh).

Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh has been fielded from Asansol in West Bengal. In Uttar Pradesh, the party has fielded former BSP MP Ritesh Pandey from Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat in UP. Hema Malini, Ravi Kishan, Ajay Mishra Teni, Mahesh Sharma, SPS Baghel and Sakshi Maharaj are among those being repeated from their seats.

In Jharkhand, former Congress MP Geeta Koda has been fielded from Singhbhum (ST reserved). Modi has set a target for the BJP to win at least 370 seats on its own in this Lok Sabha election and more than 400 for the NDA. The Election Commission is expected to announce the poll schedule later this month and the elections are likely to be held in April-May.

The BJP had won 303 seats in 2019 polls but currently it has 290 members in Lok Sabha, the number decreasing for various reasons including due to some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls. The BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC) had met for more than five hours Thursday night and deliberated on names for their first list. (With agency inputs)

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