The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday (March 2) announced the first list of candidates in the 195 Lok Sabha seats for the upcoming general elections, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi contesting from Varanasi again being the highlight of the list. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has been fielded in Gandhinagar once again and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will fight from Lucknow. The list also includes 34 central ministers and MoS and sitting Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
The list contains 195 candidates, two former chief ministers, 28 women, 47 young candidates less than 50 years of age, SC 27, ST 18, and OBC 57.
There are several sitting MPs who have not been trusted by the party to drive them home in helping it touch the 370 seats mark.
Leaders who did not make it to the first list of the BJP are:
- Pragya Singh Thakur replaced by Alok Sharma from Bhopal
- Meenakashi Lekhi replaced by Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi
- Ramesh Bidhuri replaced by Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi
- Dr Harsh Vardhan replaced by Praveen Khandelwal from Delhi Chandni Chowk
- Parvesh Verma replaced by Kamaljeet Sehrawat from West Delhi
- Ramakant Bhargava replaced by Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha
- Krishna Pal Singh Yadav replaced by Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna
- Kummanam Rajasekharan replaced by Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram
- Rameswar Teli replaced by Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh
- Guman Singh Damor was replaced by Anita Nagar Singh Chouhan from Ratlam
The CEC members, which included Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party's national president J P Nadda and Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, had discussed the probables for states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa and Uttarakhand among others to finalise the nominees.
Before that, Shah and Nadda hat met Modi at his residence to hold consultations.
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