Lok Sabha Elections 2024: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is seeking another term in the corridors of power at Centre, has announced several candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. The party has dropped several sitting MPs while also giving another run to many others. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is confident of a third tenure at the office, has set the target of 370 seats for the BJP to win in the upcoming polls, as part of which the party has fielded candidates from numerous walks of life, including actors and sportspersons.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha Elections, the BJP has banked on several personalities including the newly inducted actor Kangana Ranaut, and Ramayan fame Arun Govil into the party.
The BJP has given tickets to various personalities.
- Kangana Ranaut: Filmstar, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh
- Arun Govil: Actor, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh
- Hema Malini: Filmstar, Mathura, UP
- Manoj Tiwari: Bhojpuri star, Northeast Delhi, Delhi
- Dinesh Lal Yadav: Actor, Azamgarh, UP
- Locket Chatterjee: Actress, Hooghly, WB
- Devendra Jhajharia: Paralympic athlete, Churu, Rajasthan
- Suresh Gopi: Malayalum film star, Thrissur, Kerala
- Ravi Kishan: Bhojpuri star, Gorakhpur, UP
- Naveen Jindal: Industrialist, Kurukshetra, Haryana
- Kangana Ranaut has been fielded from the Mandi Lok Sabha seat in Himachal Pradesh. Ram Swaroop Sharma had won the election in 2019. He passed away in 2021.
- Arun Govil was given a ticket from the Meerut seat, replacing Rajendra Agarwal who won in the 2019 polls. Govil is an actor who played Lord Ram in Ramayan.
- Hema Malini is a two-time MP from Mathura. She has been given a rerun from the seat. An actor for decades, she officially joined the BJP in 2004. Malini will take on Congress candidate Mukesh Dhangar from the Mathura seat.
- Manoj Tiwari is a Bhojpuri star and singer. He is the sitting two-time MP of the BJP from the Northeast Delhi seat and a former Delhi BJP chief. He is the only Delhi BJP MP to be given a rerun in 2024. Rest all six sitting MPs have been dropped from their respective seats. He has again been given a ticket from his constituency.
- Dinesh Lal Yadav, a sitting BJP MP from the Azamgarh seat, has been given the ticket again. He had won the byelection in 2022 after Akhilesh Yadav, the then sitting MP, had resigned following his election in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls. The BJP has entrusted him once again to win the seat against Samajwadi Party’s Dharmendra Yadav. He is an actor by profession.
- Locket Chatterjee is the sitting BJP MP from the Hooghly Lok Sabha seat. Chatterjee, an actor, started her career in the TMC and later joined the BJP in 2015. She won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Hooghly seat and the party has given her ticket against TMC’s Rachna Banerjee.
- Devendra Jhajharia is a gold medalist in the 2016 Summer Paralympics. He has been given a ticket by the BJP to contest from the Churu Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan. He is up against Congress’ Rahul Kaswan who was a two-time BJP MP from the seat.
- Suresh Gopi is a Malayalam film star who has been fielded from Kerala’s Thrissur Lok Sabha seat. Renowned as a superstar in the South, he was nominated to Rajya Sabha in April 2016 in the category of eminent citizens and joined the BJP in October the same year. He has been fielded against CPI’s VS Sunil Kumar and Congress’ K Muraleedharan.
- Ravi Kishan, a renowned actor in Bollywood, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, is a sitting MP from the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat. He has been an actor with several films to his name. He joined the Congress and contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from the Jaunpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. In 2017, he quit the Congress and joined the BJP. He won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from the Gorakhpur seat and has been given a ticket once again by the party.
- Naveen Jindal: Naveen Jindal is an industrialist who joined the BJP ahead of the general elections. He has been fielded from Haryana’s Kurukshetra.
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