New Delhi:

The BJP on Saturday named its candidates for 11 more Lok Sabha constituencies, fielding a number of leaders who joined it from different parties recently such as Bhartruhari Mahtab, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Sushil Kumar Rinku and Preneet Kaur.

All these leaders have been fielded from the seats they represent in the outgoing Lok Sabha, while former Indian ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu will be making his poll debut from Amritsar.

Hans Raj Hans, who had won from North West Delhi in 2019 on a BJP ticket, will contest from the Faridkot seat, which is reserved for Scheduled Castes (SCs).

Veteran parliamentarian Mahtab, who quit the BJD recently, will contest from Cuttack, Bittu from Ludhiana, Kaur from Patiala, and Rinku from Jalandhar, a seat reserved for SCs.

Both Bittu, the grandson of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, and Kaur, the wife of former Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, were in the Congress before joining the BJP, while Rinku was in the Aam Aadmi Party.

The BJP on Sunday named two candidates from West Bengal, three from Odisha and six from Punjab.

It has so far announced its candidates for 411 seats. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Kolkata:

Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh, who had expressed his inability to contest the Lok Sabha elections from West Bengal’s Asansol just a day after the BJP announced his name for the constituency, took a U-turn on Wednesday stating that he will fight the polls to honour the promise he made to his mother.

Mr Singh, however, did not say from which constituency or from which state and on which party’s ticket he will contest the elections.

“I will fight the elections to fulfil the promise I made to my mother, my society and the people,” Mr Singh wrote on X

“I seek blessings and cooperation from everyone,” he wrote.

Though he had not specified the reason behind his decision to not contest from Asansol, his candidature had drawn criticism from the Trinamool Congress, which alleged that some of his songs were crude and depicted women, including those from Bengal, in a vulgar way.

He was fielded by the BJP against actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha, the Trinamool Congress MP from Asansol in the outgoing Lok Sabha.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

In the two lists that the BJP has released so far, the party has named 267 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, and nearly 21% of sitting MPs have already not been repeated from their respective constituencies. The strategy, sources said, has been designed keeping possible anti-incumbency in mind, and the decisions have been based on the feedback the party has got from the ground.

The choice of candidates is also important given the party’s target of winning 370 seats on its own in the Lok Sabha polls, due in just a few weeks from now, which will entail getting 67 more constituencies than it did in 2019. 

While the first list, released on March 2, saw only 33 MPs – including Pragya Thakur. Ramesh Bidhuri and Parvesh Verma – being replaced despite 195 candidates being named, 30 MPs were shown the door in Wednesday’s list of 72 names. 

Of the 267 names in the two lists, the number of sitting MPs repeated is high, at 140, and 67 MPs have not been given tickets. Two of these MPs, including Gautam Gambhir – who has been replaced in East Delhi by Harsh Malhotra – had decided not to contest. 

Numbers Game

In the second list, 20 names each have been declared from Maharashtra and Karnataka, seven from Gujarat, six each from Telangana and Haryana, five from Madhya Pradesh, two each from Delhi, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and one each from Dadra and Nagar Haveli. 

In Delhi, the BJP has replaced six of its sitting MPs and only one, Manoj Tiwari, has been repeated. 

Of the 20 candidates declared for Karnataka in the second list, 11 MPs have been replaced while only eight have been repeated.

The story in Maharashtra is the opposite, with 14 MPs being repeated and the tickets of only five getting cancelled. The MPs being repeated include Union Minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, while Pritam Munde has been replaced by her sister, Pankaja Munde, in Beed. 

For Gujarat, in the second list, only three out of seven sitting MPs have been repeated. The omissions include Union Minister Darshana Jardosh, who has been replaced by Mukesh Dalal. 

Of the six candidates declared in Haryana in the second list, three sitting MPs have been repeated and two have been replaced. A new candidate has been named for a seat where the sitting MP died. 

Telangana, where the BJP had won only four seats last time, has seen one MP being repeated and one ticket being cancelled. 

Of the five Madhya Pradesh candidates declared in the second list, two MPs have been repeated and two omitted. A new candidate, Vivek Sahu, will be fielded against Nakul Nath in the Chhindwara constituency, which was the only seat the BJP had lost in the state in 2019. 

Both MPs named for Himachal in the second list are getting a ticket again – including Union Minister Anurag Thakur from Hamirpur – while both from Uttarakhand have been replaced. 

Tripura has seen an MP being replaced while the Dadra And Nagar Haveli MP, who was with the Uddhav Thackeray faction of the Shiv Sena, will now contest on a BJP ticket. 

New Delhi:

Ahead of the expected announcement of the Lok Sabha polls by the Election Commission next month, the BJP is likely release the names of a whopping 100 candidates on Thursday. The list is expected to feature both of the party’s heaviest hitters – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah – sources have told NDTV.

The Central Election Committee of the BJP is likely to meet on Thursday, the sources said, adding that the announcement of the first list of candidates may be made after that. The first list will be crucial because the ruling party has set itself a mammoth target of winning 370 of 543  seats and is working towards securing 400 seats for the NDA. 

Replying to the debate on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address in the Lok Sabha earlier this month, PM Modi had hinted at the troubles of the opposition INDIA bloc and said that it seemed that the opposition parties had lost the courage to contest elections. “I can gauge the mood of the nation, it will definitely give the NDA more than 400 seats and the BJP at least 370 seats,” he had said, before repeating the party’s “Ab ki baar, 400 paar” slogan.