The Bharatiya Janata Party declared its first list of 182 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Thursday.
The party’s Central Election Committee had met for the third time in a week on Saturday to pick its candidates for the April-May Lok Sabha elections, but stopped short of announcing their names.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP Chief Amit Shah, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other senior leaders of the party sat for over four hours to discuss the names of possible candidates in Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
BJP has, however, named its candidates for some assembly seats for Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the states where assembly elections are being held simultaneously with parliamentary polls.
Here are the live updates:
Rajasthan candidates declared
Union minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore renominated, GS Shekhawat from Jodhpur, Arjun Lal Meena from Meena, CP Joshi from Chittorgarh , Dushyant Singh from Jhalawar-Baran–all seats in Rajasthan
BJP names candidates for J-K seats
Jugal Kishore to contest from Jammu LS seat, Dr Jitendra Singh from Udhampur, and Sofi Yousuf from Anantnag, Khalid Jehangir will contest from Srinagar
VK Singh to contest from Ghaziabad
Union ministers V K Singh to contest form Ghaziabad, Mahesh Sharma from Gautam Buddh Nagar, says JP Nadda
Home Minister Rajnath Singh to contest from Lucknow
Home Minister Rajnath Singh will contest from from Lucknow, Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, Hema Malini from Mathura, Smriti Irani from Amethi
BJP declares first list of 182 candidates, PM Modi to contest from Varanasi
Union minister JP Nadda begins briefing the press about the central election committee meeting. In all, 182 candidates to be declared today…PM Modi to contest from Varanasi, and Amit Shah from Gandhinagar.
Congress has already released six lists for LS polls
While the BJP is yet to announce its first list, the Congress has already announced candidates for 146 Lok Sabha constituencies so far. The first list of 11 candidates, announced on March 8, include Congress president Rahul Gandhi and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi from Rae Bareli and party president Rahul Gandhi from Amethi.
No sitting MP from Chhattisgarh to be renominated
In a major decision, the BJP on Tuesday announced it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls. The party decision means that Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai and seven times Lok Sabha member and former Union minister Ramesh Bais will not be fielded in the polls.
BJP press conference to begin shortly
BJP’s press conference to declare its first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections is to begin shortly in New Delhi.
The party’s central election committee had on Saturday to pick its candidates for the April-May Lok Sabha elections, but stopped short of announcing their names. It was attended by PM Modi and party president Amit Shah among others.
Source: HindustanTimes