Finance
The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) released its fifth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha Election 2024. 111 candidates, including Dharmendra Pradhan, Arun Govil, and Ravi Shankar Prasad, were listed on the list.
Actress Kangana Ranaut received a ticket from the saffron party this time around from Mandi, in her home state of Himachal Pradesh. Other contenders include the recently recruited Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra, K Surendran from Wayanad, Arjun Singh from Barrackpur, Rekha Patra from Basirhatand, and veteran actor Arun Govil, renowned for his portrayal of Lord Ram in the popular TV serial “Ramayan” will contest from Meerut.
Sita Soren, who recently joined the BJP, will run for office from Dumka as well. Agnimitra Paul will run from Mednipur, and Maneka Gandhi will run from Sultanpur.
A number of people have been dropped by the party, including Santosh Gangwar from Bareli, Varun Gandhi from Philibhit, Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur, Rajvir Singh Diler from Hathras, Union Minister Ashwini Choubey from Buxar, Rajendra Agarwal from Meerut, and VK Singh from Ghaziabad.
The BJP nominated former Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan from Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu BJP president K Annamalai from Coimbatore, and Union Minister L Murugan from the Nilgiris as part of its third list.
A C Shanmugam from Vellore, C Narasimhan from Krishnagiri, Nainar Nagendran from Tirunelveli, and Vinoj P. Selvam from Chennai Central are the candidates, according to the party.
Kerala BJP president K Surendra has been selected as the candidate for the Wayanad constituency, where incumbent MP and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi is also contesting.
In West Bengal’s Basirhat constituency, the BJP has nominated Rekha Patra, reportedly one of the victims of the Sadeshkhali incident, as part of its strategy to challenge the ruling Trinamool Congress in the state.
For the 17 seats it is contesting in Bihar, the BJP has announced its candidates, including the re-nomination of Union minister Giriraj Singh from Begusarai and former Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Patna Sahib.
With the addition of these 111 candidates, the ruling party has now named a total of 398 nominees for the elections to the 543-member Lok Sabha, excluding the four candidates who withdrew their names following controversies.
Former Karnataka chief minister Jagadish Shettar, who had briefly joined the Congress last year before returning to the BJP, will now contest from Belgaum.
In West Bengal, the BJP has announced 19 more candidates, including former Calcutta High Court judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay for Tamluk constituency.
Dilip Ghosh, the sitting MP from Medinipur, has been moved to Bardhaman–Durgapur constituency, while the incumbent S S Ahluwalia has been dropped.
The BJP has announced the names of seven candidates from Rajasthan, four each from Haryana, Karnataka, and Kerala, and 18 from Odisha, along with three each from Maharashtra and Jharkhand, among candidates from various states.
In Andhra Pradesh, D Purandeswari, the state president of the BJP, will be contesting from Rajahmundry, while former chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy will be contesting from Rajampet. The party has finalized its candidates for all six Lok Sabha seats in the state, where it is contesting in alliance with the TDP and the Jana Sena.
BJP vice president Baijayant Panda will be contesting from Kendrapara, a constituency he has previously represented in the Lok Sabha twice as a BJD member.
The first phase of voting in the state’s 39 Lok Sabha seats is scheduled for April 19. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Tamil Nadu did not yield a single seat to the BJP.
