The Central Election Committee of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) convened on Saturday to finalise candidate names for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh. The list is due for announcement on Sunday.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP National President JP Nadda, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya, Brijesh Pathak, Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, among others, attended the three-hour meeting.
In Uttar Pradesh, 10 names were finalised out of the remaining 24 seats. Odisha discussed 21 seats with Dharmendra Pradhan, Sambit Patra, and Aprajita Sarangi likely to contest from Sambhal, Puri, and Bhubneshwar respectively.
Eight seats were deliberated in Rajasthan, while all remaining seats were discussed in West Bengal. The next Central Election Committee meeting will discuss Bihar and Maharashtra.
BJP announces candidates in Tamil Nadu
Meanwhile, the saffron party has fielded Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai from Coimbatore and former Telangana governor Dr Tamilisai Soundarajan from Chennai (South).
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L Murugan will contest from Nilgiris whereas senior leaders AC Shanmugam and Pon Radhakrishnan will be in the fray from Vellore and Kanniyakumari respectively.
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The party has also fielded Indhiya Jananayaga Katchi (IJK) and sitting MP T R Paarivendhar from Perambalur, Vinoj P Selvam from Chennai (Central) and Nainar Nagendran from Thoothukudi.
The BJP also released its fourth list of candidates for Tamil Nadu on Friday. This list included Pon V Balaganapathy from Tiruvallur, RC Paul Kanagaraj from Chennai (North), A Ashwathaman from Tiruvannamalai, KP Ramalingam from Namakkal, AP Muruganandam from Tiruppur, K Vasantharajan from Pollachi, VV Senthilnathan from Karur, and P Karthiyayini from Chidambaram (SC).
Other candidates announced from Tamil Nadu are SGM Ramesh from Nagapattinam, M Muruganandam from Thanjavur, Devanathan Yadav from Sivaganga, Raama Sreenivasan from Madurai, Raadhika Sarathkumar from Virudhnagar, B John Pandian from Tenkasi (SC), A Namassivayam from Puducherry.
Congress candidate list
The Congress party also announced its fourth list of 46 candidates on Saturday. In this list, the Congress fielded its Uttar Pradesh unit chief Ajay Rai from Varanasi against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and veteran leader Digvijaya Singh from Madhya Pradesh’s Rajgarh.
The grand old party has fielded newly-inducted leader Lal Singh from Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur, former BSP leader Danish Ali from Amroha, and Sasikanth Senthil from Tirvallur.
The Congress has gone for its MLA Vikas Thakre against Union minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur. Five sitting MPs including S Jothimani (Karur), Karti Chidambaram (Sivaganga), Manickam Tagore (Virudhunagar), Vijay Vasanth (Kanniyakumari) and M K Vishnu Prasad (Cuddalore) have been repeated.
The seven-phase election for 543 Lok Sabha seats begins on April 19, with counting scheduled for June 4.
