By declaring 195 candidates in one go at least a week to 10 days before the Election Commission announces the schedule for Lok Sabha elections 2024, the BJP on Saturday exhibited a picture of confidence as it repeated many MPs in key states like Uttar Pradesh while sending 34 Union Ministers into the battlefield.
BJP’s first list of Lok Sabha election candidates is headlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who will contest again from Varanasi. Other big names in the list include Defence Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Home Minister Amit Shah from Gandhinagar and Smriti Irani from Amethi.
The party dropped four of its five sitting MPs in Delhi, while declaring five out of the seven seats in the national capital. The Congress and Aam Aadmi Party have recently stitched an alliance in Delhi.
The BJP dropped controversial names like Bhopal MP Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Delhi MPs Parvesh Singh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri. Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi was dropped from the New Delhi seat and the ticket has been given to Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj.
Among Union ministers, Bhupender Yadav will contest from Alwar, Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar and Rajeev Chandrashekhar will take on Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvananthapuram. The BJP has also fielded both Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Jyotiraditya Scindia from their old seats Vidisha and Guna, respectively, in Madhya Pradesh.
Many MPs in Uttar Pradesh have been repeated, like Hema Malini from Mathura, Ravi Kishen from Gorakhpur, Lalu Singh from Ayodhya, Sanjeev Baliyan from Muzzafarnagar and Ajay Mishra Teni from Kheri, showing the BJP’s confidence in the key state of Uttar Pradesh where it declared names for as many as 51 out of 80 seats.
The BJP had contested 436 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. With 195 seats declared on Saturday, the BJP has declared almost 40% of the seats it may contest this time if one goes by 2019 estimate.
There is another CEC (Central Election Committee) meeting of the BJP on March 6 when the party could declare more candidates. Hence, a big majority of BJP’s candidates could come before the announcement of the Lok Sabha elections by the EC.
In 2019, the first BJP list of 180-odd candidates came out on March 21 — 11 days after the election announcement that year. This time, the BJP’s first list coming at least a week to 10 days before the election announcement shows the party is hitting the ground running in its aim of winning 370 seats in 2024, senior party leaders told News18.
Some key states where the BJP is still in alliance or where seat-sharing talks have not been declared so far are Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. The BJP has also not declared candidates on key seats like Wayanad, Chhindawara and Rae Bareli and is awaiting Congress declarations on these seats after the Left said Rahul Gandhi should not contest from Wayanad.
Sonia Gandhi has stepped out of the fight in Rae Bareli and talks between Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath and the BJP did not materialise. The BJP has already declared 51 out of the 74 seats it plans to contest in UP in alliance with other smaller parties, showing that the saffron party feels it has the momentum since the Ram Mandir completion.
Most MPs in Uttar Pradesh, like Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Sakshi Maharaj and Mahesh Sharma, have been repeated. The BJP has not yet declared its safe seat of Ghaziabad, raising doubt over the candidature of sitting MP and MoS in the MEA, General VK Singh (retired). In West Bengal, many sitting MPs like state chief Sukanta Majumdar, Locket Chatterjee and Nisith Pramanik have been repeated while Anirban Ganguly is a new name given a ticket from Jadhavpur.
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