BJP repeats most candidates from U.P.; fresh faces make up half of M.P., Rajasthan list
The BJP seems to have put faith in its 2019 list of candidates from Uttar Pradesh, the State that sends 80 MPs to the Lok Sabha. Of the names announced on Saturday by the party for the State, the BJP has retained 47 of those from its list of candidates in 2019.
In Nagina reserved seat, the party named Om Kumar as its candidate denying Yashwant Singh, who had contested the 2019 poll. Likewise, the party changed its candidate from Shravasti parliamentary seat with Saket Misra, son of retired bureaucrat Nripendra Misra, getting the ticket in place of Daddan Mishra.
Union Minister of State (Home) Ajay Mishra Teni, whose son is accused of
BJP retained 47 of the candidates announced in its list for U.P. from the 2019 general election
mowing down four farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri, has been repeated from Kheri constituency, a seat that he had won in 2019 by over two lakh votes.
The BJP’s list of 24 out of 29 candidates from Madhya Pradesh has 12 new faces as the party denied tickets to seven sitting MPs while five MPs had resigned from their Lok Sabha membership after becoming MLAs in the November 2023 State Assembly election.
The fresh faces include Darshan Singh Choudhary, Ashish Dubey, Rahul Lodhi and Rajesh Mishra from Hoshangabad, Jabalpur, Damoh and Sidhi respectively. The seats were earlier represented by State Cabinet Ministers Uday Pratap Singh, Rakesh Singh and Prahlad Singh Patel, and MLA Riti Pathak.
The party also kept a largely similar ratio for Rajasthan, where it announced candidates for 15 of the State’s 25 Lok Sabha seats. The list included eight sitting MPs.
The party gave tickets to two veteran leaders who switched over from Congress recently, besides fielding five new faces in the State.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will contest the election again from Kota, BJP State president C.P. Joshi from Chittorgarh, and Union Ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kailash Choudhary from Jodhpur, Bikaner and Barmer, respectively.