BJP picks Maneka for Sultanpur, Kangana Mandi, Jindal Kurukshetra
Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, March 24
The BJP on Sunday released the fifth list of 111 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, retaining former Union minister Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur and denying her son Varun Gandhi, the sitting Pilibhit MP, a renomination.
Maneka, 67, is the seniormost MP (eight terms) in the outgoing 17th Lok Sabha.
Jitin Prasada, who was a minister in the Congress-led UPA regime before joining the BJP, replaced Varun as the BJP’s Pilibhit candidate. The Tribune had earlier reported that the BJP would either field Maneka or her son.
In another important development, seconds after Naveen Jindal, former two-time Congress MP from Haryana, and Ranjit Chautala, the son of late Deputy PM Devi Lal, joined the BJP on Sunday, they were named candidates from Kurukshetra and Hisar seats, respectively. Sitting Rohtak MP Arvind Sharma will defend his seat while MLA Madan Lal Badoli will be the Sonepat candidate.
From Kangra, the BJP has fielded Rajeev Bhardwaj amid calls to give the seat to a Brahmin leader. From West Bengal, the BJP has fielded former Calcutta HC judge Abhijit Gangopadhyay from Tamluk and sitting MP Raju Bista from Darjeeling, where former Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla was also in the running. BJP’s Kerala state chief K Surendran will take on former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad. The saffron party’s candidate opposite TMC’s Mahua Moitra in Krishnanagar will be Amrita Roy from the erstwhile Nadia royalty in the state. Roy joined the BJP only this week.
The list (with which the total number of candidates declared by BJP reached 402) features actors Arun Govil (who played Lord Rama in the famous Doordarshan series ‘Ramayana’) and Kangana Ranaut as candidates from Meerut in UP and Mandi in Himachal, respectively.
Four Union ministers — Dharmendra Pradhan (Rajya Sabha MP), Giriraj Singh, Nityanand Rai and RK Singh — have been nominated. While Pradhan will contest from Odisha’s Sambalpur, Giriraj, Rai and Singh will defend their Bihar seats — Begusarai, Ujiarpur and Ara, respectively.
Among those named today are two former Chief Ministers — Jagadish Shettar (Karnataka) and Kiran Reddy (undivided Andhra Pradesh). The following former Union ministers have secured nominations — Maneka, Ravi Shankar Prasad (Patna Sahib), D Purandeshwari (Rajamundhry), Radha Mohan Singh (Purvi Champaran), Rajiv Pratap Rudy (Saran), Jual Oram (Odisha’s Sundargarh ST), Pratap Sarangi (Odisha’s Balasore) and Jitin Prasada (Pilibhit).
Senior BJP organisational hands who will contest are — party’s national vice-president Baijayant Panda (Kendrapara, Odisha), former Bihar BJP chief Sanjay Jaiswal (West Champaran), party spokesperson Sambit Patra (Puri), BJP Andhra chief D Purandeshwari and Bengal BJP ex-president Dilip Ghosh from Bardhaman Durgapur.
The most prominent leaders dropped in today’s list are — former Army Chief and Union minister VK Singh, the sitting Ghaziabad MP who has made way for Atul Garg, and Varun Gandhi. Anant Hegde, sitting Uttara Kannada MP, who made the controversial remark that the BJP was seeking a massive mandate to be able to change the Constitution, has also been dropped.
Apart from Jindal, prominent turncoats in the list are former Trinamool Congress MLA Tapas Roy, fielded from Kolkata Uttar, and former JMM MLA Sita Soren, the daughter-in-law of JMM founder Shibhu Soren from Dumka.
The BJP has dropped 36 sitting MPs in its fifth list. The list includes BJP’s sole turbaned Sikh MP in the outgoing Lok Sabha Surendrajeet Singh Ahluwalia who represented West Bengal’s Bardhaman Durgapur seat. Former BJP Bengal chief Dilip Ghosh has replaced Ahluwalia. Across five lists, the BJP has so far dropped over 30% of its sitting MPs.
States for which candidates were named
Andhra Pradesh (six), Goa (one), Gujarat (six), Haryana (four), Himachal (two), Bihar (17), Jharkhand (three), Karnataka (four), Kerala (four), Maharashtra (three), Mizoram (one), Odisha (18), Rajasthan (seven), Sikkim (one), Telangana (two), UP (13) and West Bengal (19).
