Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'BJP comes up with first list of candidates' that was published in Newsband

BJP comes up with first list of candidates

The BJP has come up with first list of 184 candidates for 20 States for the Lok Sabha election. There are some interesting development that has taken place.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fight from Varanasi and party president Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, represented six times by former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani. Now Advani is being replaced by Shah in Gandhinagar.

Modi is not contesting from Gujarat and hence Shah was the natural choice. It is also a sign of Shah’s undisputed pre-eminence in the BJP and its affairs both in Gujarat and nationally.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP faces a formidable alliance of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. With Modi contesting from Varanasi, we have Home Minister Rajnath Singh contesting from Lucknow and Textiles Minister Smriti Irani from Amethi to take on Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

The names of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi, who represents Pilibhit and her son Varun Gandhi representing Sultanpur were not announced.

From Karnataka, A Manju from the Congress now got the ticket from Hassan to take on Prajwal Revanna, grandson of former Prime Minister Deve Gowda.

In Tamil Nadu, the BJP’s lone MP, Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan has been repeated from Kanyakumari and State unit chief Tamilsai Soundarrajan from Thoothukudi will face DMK's Kanimozhi.

In Kerala, Union Minister K J Alphons will fight from Ernakulam and former Mizoram governor Kummanam Rajashekharan will fight Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram.

The BJP wants to make serious inroads into Odisha and West Bengal. Arjun Singh will take on former Union Minister Dinesh Trivedi from Barackpore. Puri seat in Odisha may become Prime Minister Modi’s second seat in the polls.

Former BJD MP and BJP’s newest vice president Baijayant Panda will contest from Kendrapara, while bureaucrat-turned- politician Aparajita Sarangi is their Bhubaneswar candidate. BJD’s Nabrangpur Balabhadra Majhi who left the party is BJP’s candidate form the same seat.

The BJP is fielding two of its former MLA candidates, Pratap Sarangi and Brughu Baxipatra from Balasore and Berhampur respectively. Union Minister Jual Oram, the party’s only MP to scrape through in 2014, will contest again. As will Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo, who lost the Bolangir seat to her brother-in-law Kalikesh Singh Deo (BJD’s candidate for 2019 again).

In Maharashtra, the party accommodated new entrant Sujay Vikhe Patil in the Ahmadnagar seat and replaced sitting MP from Latur, Sunil Gaikwadwith Sudhakar Bahlerao Shrungare. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has been repeated from his old seat of Nagpur.

The list from Assam saw three MPs dropped: Bijoya Chakraborty in Gauhati is replaced by Queen Ojha, Dilip Saikia replacing Ramen Deka in Mangaldoi and Tapan Gogoi replacing Kamakhya Prasad Tassa in Jorhat.

Would Priyanka Gandhi dare to contest against Modi at Varnasi?