New Delhi, Nov 08: Surendra Patwa, nephew of former BJP Chief Minister Sunderlal Patwa and former Congress leader Pratap Singh Baghel, who recently joined the party, are among the 39 who have been named in the BJP's third list of candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. With this, the total number of candidates so far announced goes upto 210 in the elections to the 230 member assembly.
The candidates were cleared by the party's central election committee which met for over three hours today at the residence of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee chaired by party president M Venkaiah Naidu.
Among the seven sitting MLAs whose names were cleared by the committee were former minister Dhyanendra Singh, husband of BJP Rajya Sabha MP Maya Singh, former Bhopal Mayor Uma Shanker Gupta and Manoj Patel, son of late BJP leader from the state Nirbhay Singh Patel.
Of the 29 nominations, there are three women, two Scheduled Caste and five Scheduled Tribe candidates.
Pratap Singh Baghel who is being fielded from Kukshi (ST) will be contesting against Deputy Chief Minister Jamuna Devi.
Among those who attended the central election committee meeting were Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi, party general secretaries Pramod Mahajan, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Sanjay Joshi while the state leaders were Uma Bharati, Kailash Joshi, Babulal Gaur, Kaptan Singh and Om Prakash Mathur. Bureau Report