Of the five named candidates, only Manoj Tiwari has managed to get a renomination...reports Asian Lite News
After the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dropped 42 MPs in its first candidate list for Lok Sabha polls, Congress leader Pawan Khera asked if they were “good for nothing” and said that the party should give an account of the work done by their MPs, who are nowhere seen on the list.”We did not understand what it meant when one after another BJP MPs were leaving their positions… But when the list came out, we saw that a lot of names were missing. The BJP leadership is not happy with the work done by them,” Khera said.”Those MPs who did not get the ticket, who will answer about their five years?… Did PM Modi think that they would not win even in his name? Were they good for nothing? The party should give an account of the work done by their sitting MPs, who are not appearing on the list,” he added.The BJP, earlier today, released its first list of 195 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls. The list focussed on major names including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Minister Kiren Rijiju, and Rajeev Chandrashekhar and Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla.Of the seven parliamentary seats in the national capital, the party announced names of its first five candidates, fielding former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri from New Delhi.The party has changed its candidates for most of the seats in the national capital.Currently, the BJP holds all seven Delhi Lok Sabha seats.The party has fielded Bhojpuri superstar and current party MP Manoj Tiwari from North-East Delhi, Kamaljeet Sehrawat from West Delhi, Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi and Praveen Khandelwal from Chandni Chowk.Of the five named candidates, only Manoj Tiwari has managed to get a renomination.
Tiwari is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and has been a Member of Parliament (MP) from the North East Delhi constituency since 2014. In 2014, Tiwari joined the BJP and contested the Lok Sabha elections from the North East Delhi constituency. He won the election by a margin of over 3 lakh votes. He was re-elected in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The party is yet to announce candidates for the North Delhi and East Delhi seats.Earlier today, BJP’s sitting MPs including Jayant Sinha, who represents Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh constituency, and Gautam Gambhir, representing the East Delhi constituency announced that they would not contest the Lok Sabha polls, and requested the top leadership to “relieve” them of their political duties.The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress, which will fight in alliance, are the two other key political parties in Delhi in the fray.The AAP and the Congress have announced that they will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha election together for all seven seats.As part of the agreement reached between the ruling party in Delhi and the grand old party, Congress will contest 3 of the 7 Lok Sabha seats in the national capital, while the AAP will field candidates in the remaining 4 constituencies.The Congress will contest the Chandni Chowk, North East and North West seats in the Lok Sabha elections, while the AAP will contest New Delhi, West Delhi, South Delhi and East Delhi.The Lok Sabha polls are expected to be held in April-May this year. (ANI)
Rajnath, Smriti Irani among UP heavyweights
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced its first list of 195 candidates for Lok Sabha elections 2024. The highest number of nominees — 51, came from the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP has set an ambitious target of sweeping more than 75 of the total 80 seats.
Some other big names are Union Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, and his Cabinet colleague, Smriti Irani from Amethi. Smriti Irani, who handed out a humiliating defeat to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in the 2019 polls, will again seek re-election to Lok Sabha from this seat.
Other popular faces contesting Lok Sabha polls on BJP ticket from Uttar Pradesh include former minister Mahesh Sharma (Gautam Budh Nagar), Satyapal Singh (Agra), actress-turned-politician Hema Malini (Mathura), Ravi Kishen (Gorakhpur), Dinesh Lal Yadav Nirahua (Azamgarh), Sanjeev Balyan (Muzaffarnagar), Ajay Mishra Teni (Lakhimpur Kheri), Mahendra Nath Pandey (Chandauli), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur), Sakshi Maharaj (Unnao), among others.
Nirahua, a popular Bhojpuri actor-singer, created upheaval in Samajwadi Party’s circles in 2019 elections by snatching Azamgarh, the party’s bastion, while Ravi Kishen won Gorakhpur LS seat by a landslide margin.
Unveiling its Mission 2024, the party declared candidates from all across the country.
The list, featuring 34 sitting ministers and 2 former Chief Ministers, including 28 female nominees, 47 youth candidates, 57 nominees from OBC, reinforces the party’s social engineering strategy to strike the right chord with the voters, across all strata.
The electoral battle-ready party declared the names of candidates, almost over a month ahead of elections, to give the nominees more time to connect and mobilise voters on the ground.
The party, however, sprang a big surprise in Delhi as it dropped all its sitting MPs, except Manoj Tiwari.
The new names who bagged party tickets for Delhi’s Lok Sabha constituencies include Praveen Khandelwal from Chandni Chowk, Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi and Ramvir Bidhuri from South Delhi.
The party’s picks for Lok Sabha seats in Delhi have left everyone, including political observers, baffled and bewildered over the unexpected shake-up.
Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of late BJP leader and former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, is among the youngest faces to get fielded on the BJP ticket.
ALSO READ-Congress Confident of Himachal Govt Lasting 5 Years