In 7 lists, BJP names 306 candidates, repeats 123 MPs, drops 47

Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 24

The BJP on Sunday released its seventh list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, dropping five more sitting MPs in Chhattisgarh, including former chief minister Raman Singh’s son Abhishek Singh.

In the first list released on Thursday, the BJP had changed five sitting MPs in the state it lost badly to the Congress in the last Assembly elections. 

Today, it put to rest speculation on whether Raman Singh will contest the Lok Sabha elections from his hometown Rajnandgaon, naming Santosh Pandey for the seat held by his son Abhishek in the list of nine candidates, including six for Chhattisgarh and one each for Meghalaya, Maharashtra and Telangana. 

The BJP had won 10 of the 11 seats in the state in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

For the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, the ruling party has so far announced 306 candidates, repeating 123 sitting MPs, dropping 47 (including all 10 in Chhattisgarh). The BJP has denied tickets to at least six veterans, including party patriarch LK Advani, and some expected names, like sitting Morena MP Anoop Mishra, the nephew of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Yesterday in the sixth list of 48 candidates, the saffron party announced 15 for the state known as the ‘garh’, ‘bastion’, of both the BJP and its ideological fountainhead RSS, Madhya Pradesh, where it dropped five sitting MPs, including Vajpayee’s nephew. 

It remains to be seen whether Mishra will be fielded from some other constituency, perhaps Gwalior, especially after losing Assembly polls from Bhitarwar. Many saw the decision as an end of “Atal-Advani era. He has paid for speaking the truth,” they said. 

Meanwhile, the party is trying to find “good, winnable” candidates for four important seats -- Vidisha, the constituency of Union minister Sushma Swaraj who seems to be firm on her decision to not contest even though attempts are being made to convince her otherwise; Indore, which 75-year-old Sumitra Mahajan, the Lok Sabha Speake, has been representing since 1989; Bhopal, where the Congress has fielded Digvijaya Singh, and Gwalior, from where sitting MP and Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar has been shifted to adjoining Morena, a seat he won in 2009.

Sources say Mahajan is “keen to contest” and could be repeated given that each and every seat is important. This is one reason why Tomar had been shifted. Tomar would not have able to win Gwalior from where Mishra could be fielded. 

The new faces from Madhya Pradesh include Ujjain candidate Anil Firojiya and Himadri Singh from Shahdol-ST seat. In 2014, the BJP had won 27 out of 29 seats in MP. With Shivraj Singh Chouhan and BJP no longer in control there, the BJP is expected to shed several seats in the state.

So far, the BJP has dropped at least six veterans. In yesterday’s list also two veterans, Karia Munda from Khunti in Jharkhand and Shanta Kumar from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh were missing.

Munda was a deputy speaker of Lok Sabha between 2009 and 2014 and Shanta Kumar a former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh. Munda has been replaced by former Jharkhand CM Arjun Munda and Kumar by Dharamsala MLA Kishan Kapoor.

A key reason for dropping the veterans is their age. There seems to be an undeclared rule within the BJP not to field leaders over 75 years in age but some exceptions could be there depending upon their winnability.

The BJP has also declined tickets to Bhagat Singh Koshyari, 76, and BC Khandhuri, 84, from Uttarakhand, Bijoya Chakravarty, 79, from Guwahati, and Advani, 91. Advani has been replaced by BJP chief Amit Shah. The fate of Kanpur MP Murli Manohar Joshi, 85, has not yet been decided so far. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha will contest from Hazaribagh, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Sudarshan Bhagat from Lohardaga in Jharkhand and Minister of State in Ayush Shripad Yesso Naik has from Goa North.