Lok Sabha Elections 2024: The BJP has announced candidates for all 29 Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh after it named candidates on the remaining five seats in its second list on Wednesday.
In today's list, the BJP has named Dr Bharti Pardhi from Balaghat, Vivek 'Bunty' Sahu from Chhindwara, Anil Firoziya from Ujjain, Savitri Thakur from Dhar and Shankar Lalwani from Indore.
Vivek Bunty Sahu has been pitted against sitting Congress MP Nakul Nath, son of Kamal Nath in Chhindwara.
Sahu who had contested unsuccessfully against former chief minister Kamal Nath in 2018 and 2023 assembly polls.
On March 2, the party had declared its first list for 24 out of 29 seats in the state.
Former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia figured in the first list while Pragya Singh Thakur, the controversial parliamentarian from Bhopal, was dropped.
Shankar Lalwani and Anil Firoziya are BJP's sitting MPs.
In Dhar, the party fielded Savitri Thakur who was a Lok Sabha member from 2014 to 2019, dropping sitting MP Chattar Singh Darbar.
It fielded a new face, Dr Bharti Pardhi, in Naxal-affected Balaghat district, dropping sitting MP Dhal Singh Bisen. Dr Pardhi is a municipal corporator.
With the announcement of candidates by both Congress and the BJP, speculation about Nath joining the BJP is likely to end.
Overall, the BJP which had won 28 out of 29 seats in the state last time (except Chhindwara) has given tickets to 14 new candidates.
The seats where new candidates were fielded are Morena, Gwalior, Sagar, Bhopal, Damoh, Sidhi, Jabalpur, Hoshangabad, Ratlam, Vidisha, Guna, Balaghat, Chhindwara and Dhar.
The seats where sitting MPs were given tickets again are Bhind (Sandhya Rai), Tikamgarh (Union Minister Virendra Kumar), Khajuraho (state BJP president V D Sharma), Satna (Ganesh Singh), Rewa (Janardan Mishra), Shahdol (Himadri Singh), Mandla (Union minister Faggan Singh Kulaste), Rajgarh (Rodmal Nagar), Dewas (Mahendra Singh Solanki), Mandsaur (Sudhir Gupta), Khargone (Gajendra Patel), Khandwa (Gyaneshwar Patil) and Betul (Durgadas Uikey), Indore (Shankar Lalwani) and Ujjain (Anil Firoziya).
In the November 2023 assembly elections, the ruling party had fielded seven MPs including Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar, Faggan Singh Kulaste and Prahlad Patel.
With inputs from PTI
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