BJP fields 71% of its sitting MPs among 195 Lok Sabha candidates | Lok Sabha Election News – Business Standard
The first list of 195 Lok Sabha candidates of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), released on Saturday evening, focused on the winnability of candidates, including dealing with recent imports from other parties and dropping those whose performance or behavior left much to be desired.
BJP sources said the party has conducted extensive research and used feedback, such as on the NaMo app, in candidate selection in its bid to win 370 Lok Sabha seats and 400 seats for the National Democratic Alliance it leads.
Of the 195, the BJP announced candidates in 152 seats that it won in 2019 and 43 that it lost, including those in Kerala and Telangana.
Of the 152, the BJP fielded 108 candidates, or 71 percent, and replaced 44 of its sitting MPs.
The repeats include Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will contest from Varanasi; Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, who will again contest from Lucknow; and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who will be the BJP’s Gandhinagar candidate.
Those replaced include the 10 who had contested and won the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh in December 2023 but subsequently resigned their Lok Sabha memberships.
They include Meenakshi Lekhi, Union Minister and MP from New Delhi, Jayant Sinha, MP from Hazaribagh, Pragya Singh Thakur, MP from Bhopal and Ramesh Bidhuri, MP from South Delhi.
Of the 195, the BJP said it fielded 28 women (14.35%), 47 youth (24%), i.e. those below the age of 50, 27 from Scheduled Castes (14%) and 18 from Scheduled Tribes. 9.23 percent) and 57 from other backward classes (29.23 percent).
The list also included 34 ministers, including Bhupender Yadav, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, V Muraleedharan, Parshottam Rupala, Mansukh Mandaviya and others, who were Rajya Sabha members till now. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest from Vidisha.
Notably, the BJP announced candidates for 51 of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh, not replacing even one of the sitting MPs, while fielding recent imports such as Ritesh Pandey, formerly of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), from Ambedkar Nagar seat. Pandey, who won the seat in 2019, recently joined the BJP.
Saturday’s list did not include candidates from Bihar, Maharashtra, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP is negotiating seat-sharing agreements with current and potential allies.
In Delhi, the BJP announced candidates in five of the seven seats, removing four sitting MPs, including Lekhi. It replaced the two-term MP from the New Delhi seat with lawyer Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of late Sushma Swaraj.
Earlier in the day, the BJP’s East Delhi MP, former international cricketer Gautam Gambhir, announced his retirement from electoral politics, as did two-term Hazaribagh MP Jayant Sinha. The BJP has not yet announced a candidate for the seat held by Gambhir, but declared its candidate for the Hazaribagh seat that Sinha and his father, Yashwant Sinha, have represented since 1998, barring 2009.
The party has fielded Geeta Koda, wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda, from Singhbhum. She won the seat as a Congress candidate in 2019 and switched to the BJP last week.
Interestingly, actor Hema Malini will once again compete against Mathura. Malini, a two-term MP from Mathura, turned 75 in October 2023, violating the BJP’s unwritten rule of not fielding those above 75. It underlined the BJP’s risk-averse strategy for the Lok Sabha polls and focus on winnability.
Other highlights included the party fielding Saket Mishra, son of Prime Minister Nripendra Misra’s former principal secretary, from Shravasti in Uttar Pradesh. Nripendra Misra oversaw the construction of Ayodhya’s Ram temple. The BJP lost the Shravasti seat in 2019.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan will compete from Vidisha. He represented Vidisha in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2004 before becoming the Madhya Pradesh CM in 2005.
The BJP fielded Anil Antony, the former defense minister and son of Congress leader AK Antony, from Pathanamthitta in Kerala. Of its 195 candidates, the party fielded its only Muslim candidate from Kerala, Abdul Salam from Malappuram. The BJP has approached Christians and Muslims in the state to ensure its first Lok Sabha victory there.
The BJP fielded Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, who has been representing Congress’ Shashi Tharoor since 2009. Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will contest from Porbandar. It fielded Union ministers Bhupender Yadav from Alwar in Rajasthan, Parshottam Rupala from Rajkot in Gujarat and V Muraleedharan from Attingal in Kerala.
Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest from Guna. He is currently a Rajya Sabha MP. Scindia lost the Guna seat in 2019 to the BJP’s KP Yadav, who used to be Scindia’s aide.
Another Union minister, Sarbananda Sonowal, will contest from Dibrugarh, with the BJP dropping its sitting MP. Sonowal, a former Assam chief minister, is a Rajya Sabha MP and won the Dibrugarh seat in 2004 as an Asom Gana Parishad candidate.
The BJP fielded Praveen Khandelwal from Chandni Chowk of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), dropping former Union Health Minister and sitting MP Harsh Vardhan. Khandelwal had earlier unsuccessfully contested on a BJP ticket from the Chandni Chowk Assembly seat in the 2008 Delhi Assembly polls.
For the 14 seats of Assam, the BJP announced candidates on 11 seats. The country is likely to allocate the remaining three seats to its allies. In 2019, the BJP won nine of the fourteen seats. In the list announced on Saturday, the BJP replaced five sitting MPs and renominated four MPs from the northeastern state.
In Chhattisgarh, the BJP announced candidates for all eleven seats. It won nine seats in the state in 2019. Of the nine, only two MPs have been repeated, those from Rajnandgaon and Durg, with the BJP fielding different candidates in seven of the incumbent seats than those who won five years ago. Of the seven, three MPs contested the Chhattisgarh Assembly elections in December 2023 and resigned after being elected to the state legislative assembly.
In Delhi, where the BJP won all seven seats in 2019, the BJP announced five candidates. It dropped four of its sitting MPs.
The BJP announced 15 candidates in Gujarat, replacing five and renominating 10. It won all 26 seats in the state in 2019.
In Jharkhand, the BJP announced 11 candidates, including on nine incumbent seats, replacing only two of the sitting MPs, including Hazaribagh MP Jayant Sinha.
In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP announced 24 candidates for the state’s 29 seats, where it had won 28 five years ago. The BJP has repeated and replaced 12 sitting MPs, including Narendra Singh Tomar, who contested and won the December 2023 Assembly elections and subsequently quit the Lok Sabha.
In Rajasthan, the BJP announced 15 candidates, eight of which were repeated and six sitting MPs replaced. In 2019, the BJP supported Rashtriya Loktantrik Party’s Hanuman Beniwal from Nagaur seat. Beniwal won but left the National Democratic Alliance after the 2020-2021 farmers’ protests. The BJP has fielded former Congress leader Jyoti Mirdha from Nagaur seat.
In Telangana, the BJP has fielded its sitting MPs as well as sitting MP Bharat Rashtra Samithi from Zahirabad, who recently joined the party. In West Bengal, the BJP has fielded Pavan Singh, a Bhojpuri singer, from Asansol.
Northeast Delhi MP Manoj Tiwari, Gorakhpur MP Ravi Kishan and Azamgarh MP Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’, all of whom have been redeployed, are also Bhojpuri film actors.
It has also fielded Bengal leader Suvendu Adhikari’s brother Soumendu from the Kanthi seat.