The BJP on Wednesday brainstormed over the party’s probable candidates in several States for the Lok Sabha elections, a day before its Central Election Committee is expected to meet to finalise the names for the first list of about 100 party nominees. The list will have names of candidates from seats in States like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
Sources said Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president JP Nadda held separate meetings with party leaders from several States, including Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand among others. Similar meetings with leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana have been held so far.
While the lists of names in 2019 were released only after the Election Commission had announced the election schedule, it is going to be different this time as the BJP looks to follow the template seen during the latest round of Assembly polls in five States when it named its candidates, especially in the seats the party had lost five years earlier, before the announcement of dates.
The first list, party sources said, is expected to be 100 candidates which include the names of heavyweights like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Shah, Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Smriti Irani, Nirmala Sitharmana, S Jaishanker and Bollywood super star Akshay Kumar about whom grapevine in the party has it that he may be fielded from the prestigious New Delhi Parliamentary continue.
Other candidates from the spheres of sports and education sector are also doing the rounds and the party is completely tight lipped to reveal names being discussed as of now. Party sources also said to keep the NDA constituents in good humour and a few minority candidates could also be fielded.
Modi is the MP from Varanasi, a constituency he has won twice and is likely to contest for third consecutive time. He was elected with a huge margin of 3.37 lakh votes in 2014 and had increased it to 4.8 lakh in 2019.
Amit Shah had contested the 2019 election from Gandhinagar, a seat that had been held by BJP veteran LK Advani until then. The first list for the 2019 elections had also included Modi and Shah, who was then the party’s national president and had made his Lok Sabha poll debut from Gandhinagar.
Union Minister Smriti Irani from Amethi, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, Union Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Parvesh Verma from West Delhi, Manoj Tiwari from North West Delhi, and Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi are also set to be named in the first list.
Union Ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupendra Yadav, Piyush Goyal, Mansukh Mandaviya, Parshottam Rupala, and Rajeev Chandrasekhar may also be featured in the first list.
The election committee of Delhi BJP has also submitted a list of 25-30 probables to the national leadership for the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national Capital, party leaders said on Wednesday.
The names of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and former leader Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj were among the probables from the New Delhi seat apart from sitting MP Meenakshi Lekhi, a senior Delhi BJP official said.
“The list of probables was discussed in a meeting of the national leaders, including Nadda, Shah and state president Virendra Sachdeva at the party’s headquarters on DDU Marg,” he said.
Modi has set a target of winning 370 seats for the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls, expected to be held in April-May, and of over 400 for the ruling National Democratic Alliance.
For the 2024 polls, the BJP has identified 160 seats that the party deems weak and thus organised early campaigning and public contact programmes over the past one year.
The meeting on Uttar Pradesh was attended by Shah and saw the participation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Deputy Chief Ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak, and Minister Dharampal Singh, among others.
In the 2019 election, the BJP had won 62 of the State’s 80 seats. There was also a discussion on the 42 seats of the West Bengal where the BJP is keeping a close eye on 35 out of 42 Lok Sabha seats.
