Rajasthan Assembly Elections: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released the final list of candidates for the upcoming Rajasthan Assembly elections. The BJP has fielded sitting Bari MLA Girraj Singh Malinga, who switched over from the Congress, from the Bari constituency.
Here's BJP's new list
In the new list, the party has nominated Deepak Kadwasara from Barmer and Arun Amraram Chaudhary from Pachpadra.
Malinga joins BJP
Notably, Congress MLA from Dholpur's Bari seat Girraj Malinga joined the BJP on Sunday. Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and other senior leaders were present when the Congress MLA switched to BJP in Jaipur.
In March last year, Malinga and others were named in a case after two engineers were allegedly assaulted at the Bari office of the electricity department in Dholpur district. Later, he was arrested.
Other local Congress leaders of Dholpur, Mustaq Ahmed Khan, Ravi Pachauri, Deep Singh Kushwaha, Mangilal Sharma and Ramvaran Sharma also joined the party. Additionally, Anurag Singh Brar, the youth wing president of the Aam Aadmi Party, also joined the BJP.
BJP replaces candidates in two seats
BJP also released the fifth list of 15 candidates on Sunday and replaced its candidates in two seats for the election. The party dropped the sitting MLA from Mawli (Udaipur) Dharmnarayan Joshi and fielded K G Paliwal instead.
The BJP has also included some fresh faces in its fifth list, including a journalist and a businessman. It has fielded Gopal Sharma, a journalist, from Civil Lines, and businessman Ravi Nayyar from Adarsh Nagar. Sharma is pitted against the Congress' Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, who is also a state minister.
According to the BJP's third list released on November 2, the party had fielded Poonam Kanwar Bhati, the daughter-in-law of former minister Devi Singh Bhati, from Kolayat seat and Sarika Chaudhary from Baran-Atru seat.
However, in the lists released on Sunday, Poonam Kanwar Bhati was replaced by her son Anshuman Singh Bhati and Chaudhary was replaced by Radheshyam Bairwa. Amit Chaudhary has been given a ticket from Hanumangarh, Chandramohan Batvada from Kishanpole, Vijay Bansal from Bharatpur, former MLA Rajkumar Rinwa from Sardarshahar, Prahlad Gunjal from Kota North and Babu Singh Rathore from Shergarh.
The names of candidates for Shahpura, Rajakhera, Masuda and Pipalda seats were also announced.
Check full list here
The last date for filing nominations is November 6. Polling for the 200-member Rajasthan Assembly will be held on November 25 and votes will be counted on December 3.
(With PTI inputs)
