Minister withdrawn, but wife identified in Punjab, Maharashtra Shivaji descendent

The BJP filed his wife from the Punjabi constituency of Hoshiarpur instead of another Union minister, which was the 12th list of candidates for seven Lok Sabha seats.

In the highly visible Satara seat, the party has also nominated a member of the Rajya Sabha who is a descendent of Chhatrapati Shivaji’s former royal Maratha line. The BJP recognized Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosale for a seat that Praful Patel of the Ajit Pawar-led NCP, who is now an ally of the BJP in the coalition government that rules Maharashtra, was keen to run for.

As a candidate for the then-undivided NCP in 2019, Bhosale was elected to the Satara seat. After quitting a few months later, he joined the BJP. However, Bhosale, running as a BJP candidate against NCP’s Shrinivas Patil, lost in the subsequent bypolls. Later, in April 2020, the BJP proposed him for the Rajya Sabha. His tenure expires in 2026.

Abhijit Das, the third prominent BJP contender on the list, is a candidate from Diamond Harbour who will compete against Abhishek Banerjee, the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, on June 1 in the election’s final round. Das is a very fluent former president of the South 24 Parganas district unit of the party. Das is an RSS member who ran a failed campaign for Lok Sabha in 2014. The party has declared all 42 of the West Bengali candidates with his candidacy.

In Punjab, the BJP nominated his wife, Anita Som Parkash, in the seat of Union minister Som Parkash from Hoshiarpur. According to the party, Som Parkash has a significant amount of influence in the constituency. In 2014, the Hoshiarpur seat was won by the BJP. Som Parkash defeated Raj Kumar Chabbewal of the Congress to win the seat in 2019.

The party and its former ally SAD clashed in the last elections for the Hoshiarpur seat.

In Bathinda, which is now represented by Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the SAD, the BJP has now nominated Parampal Kaur Sidhu, a former IAS official.

Sidhu, who just joined the BJP with her spouse Gurpreet Singh Maluka, is the daughter-in-law of prominent Akali politician Sikander Singh Maluka. She was an IAS officer from the 2011 batch and will compete against Gurmeet Singh Khudian of the AAP and Jeet Mohinder Sidhu of the Congress.

It’s interesting to see that SAD hasn’t yet declared their Bathinda candidate.

Just three days before the first round of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP released their most recent list. The Central Election Committee of the party also declared its candidates for Uttar Pradesh. Out of the 543 LS seats altogether, the party has so far filed candidates for 430 of them.

The party has dropped MPs from Firozabad and Deoria in favour of Vishwadeep Singh and Shashank Mani Tripathi in Uttar Pradesh. According to a party source, the MPs’ removal was primarily motivated by opposition to the incumbents in these two seats.

An ex-IAS official will compete from Bathinda.

Former Bathinda IAS official Parampal Kaur Sidhu, who is now represented by Harsimrat Kaur Badal of the SAD, has been nominated by the BJP.Leader of the Akali tribe Sikander Singh Maluka’s daughter-in-law is Sidhu. She will compete against Gurmeet Singh Khudian of the AAP and Jeet Mohinder Sidhu of the Congress.