Top leadership in the Lok Sabha election contest: PM retains Varanasi, BJP withdraws with initial list of 195

The governing BJP released the first list of 195 candidates on Thursday, indicating that they were prepared for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be running for office from his Varanasi seat for the third time in a row.

Senior ministers will fight for their seats: MoS (PMO) Jitendra Singh from Udhampur; Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda from the Khunti ST seat in Jharkhand; Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani from Amethi; Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West; and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh from his current segment, Lucknow.

The BJP has entered prominent ministers who are now Rajya Sabha MPs in the polls, as was predicted. The following RS MPs are running: Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav (two terms in the RS) from Alwar; Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya (two terms in the RS) from Porbandar; and Minister of Animal Husbandry Purushottam Rupala (three terms in the RS) from Rajkot. Currently serving as the MP for Thiruvananthapuram, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has won the seat three times in a row. Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister of Civil Aviation, and Sarbananda Sonowal, Minister of Shipping and Ports, were nominated from Guna (MP) and Dibrugarh (Assam), respectively, for their maiden mandates in the Rajya Sabha by the BJP.

Two former chief ministers, Biplab Deb of Tripura West and Shivraj Singh Chouhan of Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, are on the list of 195. The Tribune on Saturday claimed that Raman Singh and Vasundhara Raje, Chouhan’s erstwhile equivalents from Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, had not made the LS cut. Saroj Pandey, MP for the Rajya Sabha and national vice president of the BJP, will contest from Korba in Chhattisgarh.

UP (which has 80 seats) has 51; West Bengal (20 seats); MP (24 seats); Gujarat (15 seats); Rajasthan (15 seats); Kerala (20 seats); Telangana (9 seats); Assam (14 seats); all candidates in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand; five from Delhi (seven seats); two from J&K (six seats); three from Uttarakhand (five seats); two from Arunachal (two seats); and one each from Goa (two seats), Tripura (two seats), Andaman & Nicodbar Islands (one seat), and Daman and Diu (one seat).

The BJP has lost 34 of its current MPs, or around 23%, according to an examination of the list of 195 candidates from 16 states and 2 union territories. Notable candidates include Pragya Thakur in Bhopal, former Union minister Jayant Sinha in Jharkhand, and former chief minister of Uttarakhand Tirath Singh Rawat in Garhwal. In the 2022 presidential election, Jayant’s father, Yashwant Sinha, ran as the opposition candidate against Droupadi Murmu, the nominee of the governing BJP.

The wife of former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Kora, Geeta, has joined the BJP as a sitting member of another party after defecting from the Congress. She intends to defend Singhbhum ST, her present seat.

Ambedkar Nagar (UP) MP Ritesh Pandey of the BSP and Zahirabad (Telangana) MP BB Patil of the BRS, two current Lok Sabha MPs who joined the BJP, have been fielded.

In today’s announcement, the BJP revealed their candidates for 46 seats in Kerala, Telangana, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, and Jharkhand, out of the 161 weak seats that it had targeted for 2019 and either lost or won by slim margins. Out of 51 MPs selected today, the BJP has played it very safe in Uttar Pradesh, removing just one incumbent MP (in Nagina SC).

Ajay Mishra Teni, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, is included in the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh list from his present seat of Kheri. It is believed that his son Ashish killed five people during the riots in Lakhimpur in October 2021, including four farmers.

Crucially, the party refrained from announcing its nominee for Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh, which is already represented in Lok Sabha by the contentious former WFI president Brij Bhushan Singh. The Ghaziabad seat of Minister and former Army Chief VK Singh, as well as the MP’s Chhindwara seat held by Congress veteran Kamal Nath’s son Nakul, who has ties to the BJP, were not announced today. 34 ministers and ministers of state, 28 women (or 14.3% of all candidates), 47 candidates under 50, 27 SCs, 18 STs, and 57 OBCs are on the list.

The BJP ran for 436 of the 543 seats in the 2019 elections, and it won 303 (69%) of them. BJP national secretary Vinod Tawde said, “This time, our target is 370 plus for the BJP and 400 plus for the NDA.” He noted that as elections had not yet been called, discussions on candidates for the remaining states would take place eventually.

Daughter of Sushma fielded from Delhi

Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi was withdrawn; Cong veteran AK Antony’s son Anil was filed from Kerala’s Pathanamthitta; and MoS (Home) Ajay Mishra “Teni,” whose son is implicated in the Lakhimpur case, was to run from Kheri. The late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj will run from New Delhi.