Rijiju to fight from Arunachal West, Gao from East
ITANAGAR, 2 Mar: The ruling BJP on Saturday announced that union minister Kiren Rijiju will fight again from the Arunachal West parliamentary seat in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
MP Tapir Gao has been retained from the Arunachal East parliamentary constituency, according to BJP sources.
Announcing the first list of 195 candidates in New Delhi, BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde said that the party is confident that it would form the government for the third term under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a much bigger mandate.
According to the list, Modi will fight again from Varanasi in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The first list also named 34 union ministers including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, Mansukh Mandaviya, Jitendra Singh, Sarbananda Sonowal, Gajendra Shekhawat, Bhupender Yadav, G Kishan Reddy, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Arjun Ram Meghwal, and Arjun Munda.
Two former ministers as well as Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will fight again from Kota in Rajasthan, and former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan will contest from Vidisha.
The list includes 28 women and 47 young leaders, he said.
The announced names included those for 51 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 20 in West Bengal and five in Delhi.
The list saw major changes for Delhi with Ramesh Bidhuri, Parvesh Verma, Meenakshi Lekhi and Harsh Vardhan being dropped from their respective seats, while Sadhvi Pragya Thakur was also dropped from her Bhopal seat.
Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, will make her poll debut from the New Delhi seat, Kamaljeet Sehrawat will contest from the from West Delhi, MLA Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi, and Praveen Khadelwal from Chandni Chowk, while Manoj Tiwari has been retained from the North East Delhi constituency.
Besides Lekhi, John Barla is another union minister who has been dropped from their seats.
Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh has been fielded from Asansol in West Bengal.
Modi has set a target for the BJP to win at least 370 seats on its own in this Lok Sabha elections and more than 400 for the NDA.
The Election Commission is expected to announce the poll schedule later this month and the elections are likely to be held in April-May.
The BJP had won 303 seats in the 2019 polls but currently it has 290 members in the Lok Sabha, the number decreasing for various reasons, including due to some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls.
The BJP’s central election committee had met for more than five hours on Thursday night and deliberated on the names for their first list. (With inputs from PTI)
