Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday released the second list containing names of 72 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
This list includes the names of many veteran leaders including former Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar from Haryana’s Karnal, Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur.
Apart from this, ticket has been given to Piyush Goyal from Mumbai North seat, Anurag Thakur from Hamirpur and Anil Baluni from Garhwal seat of Uttarakhand.
It is noteworthy that BJP had announced the names of 195 candidates in the first list.
In its second list, BJP has fielded Ashok Tanwar from Sirsa seat of Haryana, while Rao Inderjit Singh Yadav will be in the fray from Gurugram.
Apart from this, ticket has been given to Banto Kataria from Ambala and Chaudhary Dharambir Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh. Whereas, Krishna Pal Gurjar has got the ticket from Faridabad.
Union Minister Anurag Thakur has been fielded from Hamirpur seat of Himachal Pradesh, while Suresh Kumar Kashyap will be in the fray from Shimla.
On the other hand, ticket has been given to Annasaheb Shankar Jolle from Chikkodi seat of Karnataka, PC Gaddigoudar from Bagalkot, Ramesh Jigjinagi from Bijapur, Umesh ji Jadhav from Gulbarga.
B Shramulu from Bellary and Basavaraj Bommai from Haveri have been fielded. Pralhad Joshi has been given ticket from Dharwad.
Tumkur V Somanna has got the ticket. Tejaswi Surya will be in the fray from Bengaluru South.
Talking about Madhya Pradesh, tickets have been given to Bharti Pardhi from Balaghat, Vivek Sahu from Chhindwara, Anil Firoziya from Ujjain. Shankar Lalwani has been made the candidate from Indore.
Subhash Ramrao Bhamre has been given ticket from Dhule seat of Maharashtra, Smita Wagh from Jalgaon, Anup Dhotre from Akola. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will again contest from Nagpur.
Whereas, Raosaheb Dadarao Danve has been made the candidate from Jalna. Anil Baluni has got the ticket from Garhwal seat of Uttarakhand, Trivendra Singh Rawat has got the ticket from Haridwar.
The dates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections can be announced in the next few days. The Election Commission has completed preparations and the schedule of the general elections can be announced soon. The last Lok Sabha elections were conducted in a total of seven phases in the months of April and May.
For this reason, it is expected that this time too, voting can be done in several phases in April and May and the results can be announced in the end of May.
A meeting of the Central Election Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was held last Monday to finalize the names of the second list.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP President JP Nadda and other members of the Central Election Committee were present in the meeting held at the BJP headquarters. Sources had said that the states discussed included Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh.
The BJP has recently joined hands with several parties in view of the general elections expected in April-May. Telugu Desam Party has recently joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Its talks are also going on with the ruling Biju Janata Dal of Odisha.
Earlier, the BJP’s Central Election Committee meeting was held on March 1 and the next day the party released the first list of 195 candidates for 16 states and two union territories.
The names of Prime Minister Modi (Varanasi), Shah (Gandhinagar) and Defense Minister Rajnath Singh (Lucknow) were also included in the first list. The names of 34 Union ministers were included in this list while the tickets of three ministers were cancelled.