Lok Sabha elections 2024: The BJP’s first list includes four Bhojpuri celebrities. Who do they represent?
The much-awaited initial list of 195 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections was released by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday. Among them are prominent figures like Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi. Four Bhojpuri celebrities have also been nominated by the BJP, including Pawan Singh of Asansol, West Bengal.
Manoj Tiwari from Northeast Delhi, Ravi Kishan from Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, and Dinesh Lal Yadav, well known as Nirahua from Azamgarh, are the other three Bhojpuri actors. They are all now serving as Members of Parliament.
1. Manoj Tiwari: Well-known Bhojpuri singer-actor and two-term incumbent MP from North East Delhi, Manoj Tiwari will run for the BJP in the same constituency for a third consecutive term. The Congress candidate Sheila Dikshit, a former chief minister of Delhi, was soundly defeated by the BJP leader in the 2019 election. A well-known Purvanchali face of the BJP in the nation’s capital, Manoj Tiwari served as the head of the party’s Delhi branch in the past. In 2009, he unsuccessfully ran in his first Lok Sabha election as a Gorakhpur-based Samajwadi Party candidate against current Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
2. Ravi Kishan: Renowned Bhojpuri actor Ravindra Shyamnarayan Shukla urf Ravi Kishan will run for office a second time from Gorakhpur, the stronghold of Yogi Adityanath. The seat was held by the current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh till 2017 when Ravi Kishan became victorious in 2019. With a lead of more than 3 lakh votes, Ravi Kishan defeated SP candidate Rambhual Nishad in the 2019 election. The youngest of five siblings, his family is from Jaunpur in Kerakat, Uttar Pradesh. As a Congress candidate from Jaunpur, he ran in his first Lok Sabha election in 2014 but was unsuccessful.
3. Dinesh Lal Yadav: Azamgarh’s current Member of Parliament, Dinesh Lal Yadav, also known by his stage name Nirahua, is a well-known actor who will run for office in the forthcoming parliamentary elections from the SP’s stronghold. He had beaten Dharmendra Yadav of the SP in the 2022 by-elections by about 9,000 votes. After winning the seat in 2019 and getting elected as an MLA from Karhal in the 2022 UP legislative assembly elections, SP president Akhilesh Yadav subsequently tendered his resignation from the constituency. Nirahua is a member of Ghazipur’s well-known Biraha family. He became a member of the BJP in 2017 and lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election against Akhilesh Yadav.
4. Pawan Singh: The well-known playback singer and Bhojpuri actor, well known for the hit song Lollipop Lagelu, will run from Asansol in West Bengal. At the moment, Asansol is led by TMC veteran and veteran Bollywood and Bhojpuri actor Shatrughan Sinha. Because of his amazing singing, Pawan Singh, who is from Arrah in Bihar, is known to his followers as the Power Star of the Bhojpuri Industry. The Asansol candidate has not yet been declared by the TMC. Asansol will see an intriguing struggle between the two candidates who are truly from Bihar if Shatrughan Sinha is put up once again. Famous musician Babul Supriyo defeated TMC’s Moon Moon Sen to win this seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections on a BJP ticket. He left the position after two years and joined the TMC. Shatrughan Sinha was chosen from Asansol to serve in the Lok Sabha in 2022.
Fifty-one seats from Uttar Pradesh, twenty from Madhya Pradesh, twenty from West Bengal, fifteen from Gujarat and Rajasthan, twelve from Kerala, nine from Telangana, eleven from Assam, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand, two from Arunachal Pradesh, two from Uttarakhand, and one each from Goa, Tripura, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Daman and Diu were on the BJP’s list. Additionally, up to 33 current MPs were swapped out for fresh faces.
