Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 2: The BJP on Saturday released the first list of its candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections containing 195 names with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi leading the rest figuring as the party nominee to re-contest the Varanasi seat in Uttar Pradesh.
It was perhaps the first time the BJP has announced its list of candidates, at least partly, even before the election dates are announced by the Election Commission of India.
Mr Modi’s close aide the union home minister Amit Shah will again contest from Gandhinagar in Gujarat while the defence minister Rajnath Singh has been named from Lucknow.
The first list which included candidates from 16 states and two Union Territories (UT) for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, was released a day after a marathon meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) that continued for over six hours. The list include candidates on – 51 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 24 from Madhya Pradesh, 15 each from Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 from Kerala, 9 seats from Telangana, 11 from Assam, 11 each from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, five from Delhi, two from Jammu and Kashmir, three from Uttarakhand, two from Arunachal Pradesh and one each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar, and Daman and Diu. The list features 28 women candidates, 47 youth, 27 from Scheduled Caste, 18 from Scheduled Tribes and 57 OBC candidates.
The list includes 34 Union ministers and two former chief ministers. The party has fielded Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj, from New Delhi replacing Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi. Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was denied a fifth term in his state as the chief minister, has been given ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections from the Vidisha constituency in the state, while former Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb will contest from Tripura West.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will contest from Kota in Rajasthan. Union ministers Bhupender Yadav from Alwar constituency and Gajendra Shekhawat from Jodhpur are two other prominent leaders contesting from Rajasthan.
Two other Union ministers will contest in Kerala — Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram and V Muraleedharan from Attingal.
The list of candidates was finalised by the Central Election Committee (CEC), which met on Thursday with Mr Modi heading the marathon meeting. Announcing the first list, BJP general secretary Vinod Tawde said the party has been trying to increase the spread of the BJP and the NDA. “Not just the BJP, even the people in this country want “fir ek baar Modi sarkar,” he claimed.
The party had used the ‘early-start’ strategy in the recent assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana. The party leaders have said it was a successful strategy.
The BJP is heading towards the elections, expected to be announced soon, with an unprecedented confidence after Modi has set a target of 370 seats for the party on its own and 400 plus for its NDA coalition. The party has already stitched fresh alliances with smaller parties as well as regional outfits like Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, got back its former partner Janata Dal (United) in Bihar and has been in talks with parties like TDP- JanaSena in Telangana.
Sources also said with a high target for the Lok Sabha elections, the party had to keep aside some of its plans to prune the candidates list and “winnability” has become the priority.
With the party expected to win most of the states in the Hindi heartlands and its traditional bastions, the BJP is expected to focus on the southern states to win more seats and increase the vote share. The BJP scored 100 per cent in Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat and lost just one seat in Madhya Pradesh, two in Chhattisgarh and its alliance lost just one in Bihar in the 2019 elections.