The BJP on Saturday announced the names of 195 candidates from 16 states and two union territories for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections that are likely to be announced by 11 March. The party has denied tickets to at least 43 sitting Members of Parliament who had won in 2019. The fact that it has not gone for a large-scale surgery, as party leaders had indicated earlier, indicates that the BJP does not want to play with the status-quo too much and has replaced only those candidates against whom there were serious complaints from the party workers and leaders.
The seats from where it has replaced its sitting MPs include: Silchar, Autonomous district, Gauhati, Tejpur, Dibrugarh in Assam; Sarguja, Rajgarh, Janjgir-Champa, Bilaspur, Raipur, Mahasamund, Kanker in Chhattisgarh; Chandni Chowk, New Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi in Delhi; Banaskantha, Ahmedabad West, Rajkot, Porbandar, Panchmahal in Gujarat; Lohardaga, Hazaribagh, Singhbhum in Jharkhand; Morena, Gwalior, Guna, Sagar, Damoh, Siddhi, Jabalpur, Hoshangabad, Vidisha, Bhopal, Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh; Churu, Alwar, Jalore, Udaipur, Banswara in Rajasthan; Nagarkurnool in Telangana; Tripura West in Tripura; and Alipurduar in West Bengal.
In mathematical terms, in its first list, it has denied tickets to almost 21% of the candidates, or every 1 in 5 candidates has been replaced. In the 2019 elections, it had won 303 seats, while contesting 437 seats. The party presently has 290 MPs.
The next Central Election Committee meeting that finalises the ticket is scheduled for 6 March where candidates from Bihar, Maharashtra, Karnataka and other states will be decided. The notable candidates who have been dropped include Pravesh Verma, Harsh Vardhan, Meenakshi Lekhi, Sadhvi Pragya and Narendra Singh Tomar and South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who had said extremely objectionable stuff against a Muslim MP in the Lok Sabha.
Krishna Pal Singh Yadav, who had defeated Jyotiraditya Scindia in the last election from Guna, has been dropped and in his place Scindia will contest the elections. Scindia was a member of the Congress in 2019. As per the press release issued, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from his existing seat of Varanasi, scotching speculation that he was likely to contest from Puri in Odisha or from a southern state.
According to Vinod Tawde, BJP’s national general secretary, the first list of 195 candidates had the names of 34 sitting ministers, the Speaker of Lok Sabha (Om Birla), two former union ministers, 28 women candidates, 47 candidates below the age of 50 years, 27 candidates from the Scheduled Castes, 18 from the Scheduled Tribes. The most, 57 belong to the Other Backward Classes, re-enforcing BJP’s focused agenda towards moving from the perception of just a “Brahmin-Baniya” party and its outreach towards the “weaker” castes who, however, are numerically much stronger.
The notable inclusion in the list includes Union Minister Bhupender Yadav, who will be contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the first time; former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan who will be contesting his sixth Lok Sabha elections from Vidisha; former Tripura CM Biplab Deb; Rajeev Chandrashekhar, who too, like Mansukh Mandaviya, will be contesting the Lok Sabha elections for the first time. Party ideologue Anirban Ganguly too has been asked to contest. Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj, Anil Antony, son of senior Congress leader A.K. Antony and Saket Misra, the son of former top bureaucrat Nripendra Misra are some of the names that have been given the chance to carry forward their parent’s legacy and build on their own.
Geeta Koda, who switched from the Congress to the BJP just a few days ago, has too been given the ticket. She is the wife of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda who became a global name due to his alleged involvement in the mining scam in the state. B.B. Patil is another turncoat who features in the list. He had recently joined the BJP after leaving the Bhartiya Rashtra Samiti.
Another BRS turncoat, who joined the BJP earlier last week, Nagarkurnool MP Pothuganti Ramulu’s son P. Bharat has been made the BJP nominee from the same seat. The chairperson of Virinchi chain of hospitals, Dr Madhavi Latha will take on Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi.