The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday released the first list of 70 candidates for the Assam elections. The assembly polls in the state will be held in 3 phases beginning March 27. The counting of votes will take place on May 2. Earlier in the day, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) released the full list of 291 candidates for the forthcoming elections in Bengal.
"We are declaring the names of candidates on 70 seats as of now, out of the 126 seats in Assam Assembly. We are giving 26 seats to Asom Gana Parishad and 8 seats to United People's Party Liberal (UPPL)," Arun Singh, BJP National General Secretary said in a presser today.
Out of the total 126 seats, BJP will contest 92 seats while the rest will be left for the alliance partners. The party said it has not given ticket to 11 sitting MLAs in the forthcoming polls.
According to the candidates' list, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal will contest from Majuli Assembly constituency while Himanta Biswa Sarma will contest from Jalukbari Assembly constituency. Both of them used to contest from these constituencies earlier too, Arun Singh informed.
On Thursday, BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC) had finalised the names of party candidates for the 86 constituencies in Assam that will go to the polls in the first two phases of Assembly elections on March 27 and April 1.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP chief JP Nadda, Union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and other CEC members were present at the meeting, which was also attended by the party's national General Secretary (Organisation) B.L. Santosh.
Assam Chief Minister Sarbanand Sonawal, party state in-charge Baijayant Panda and other senior leaders were also present at the meeting, besides Assam poll in-charge Narendra Singh Tomar and co-incharge Jitendra Singh.
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