New Delhi: The BJP on Saturday declared its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking re-election from Varanasi. The list also featured 34 Union ministers, including Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani. The list also had two former chief ministers – Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) and Biplab Deb (Tripura) – and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, who will contest again from Kota in Rajasthan.


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Chouhan will fight from Vidisha and Deb from Tripura West. Other prominent names in the list are Union ministers Mansukh Mandaviya, Jitendra Singh, Sarbananda Sonowal, Gajendra Shekhawat, Bhupender Yadav, G Kishan Reddy, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Arjun Munda.


BJP National General Secretary Vinod Tawde, who announced the list, said the party is confident of forming the government for the third time under Modi’s leadership with a bigger mandate. He also said the party is working to expand its presence across various states and strengthen the National Democratic Alliance.


The list has 28 women and 47 young leaders, he said. The names announced include those for 51 seats in Uttar Pradesh, 20 in West Bengal and five in Delhi. The list saw major changes for Delhi with Ramesh Bidhuri, Parvesh Verma, Meenakshi Lekhi and Harsh Vardhan being dropped from their seats, while Sadhvi Pragya Thakur was also dropped from her Bhopal seat.


Bansuri Swaraj, daughter of the late BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, will make her electoral debut from the New Delhi seat, Kamaljeet Sehrawat will fight from West Delhi, MLA Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi, Praveen Khadelwal from Chandni Chowk, while Manoj Tiwari has been retained from the North East Delhi seat. Besides Lekhi, John Barla is another Union minister who has been dropped from their seat.


Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh has been fielded from Asansol in West Bengal. In Uttar Pradesh, the party has fielded former BSP MP Ritesh Pandey from Ambedkar Nagar Lok Sabha seat, while Hema Malini, Ravi Kishan, Ajay Mishra Teni, Mahesh Sharma, SPS Baghel and Sakshi Maharaj are among those being repeated from their seats.


In Jharkhand, former Congress MP Geeta Koda has been fielded from Singhbhum (ST reserved). Modi has set a target for the BJP to win at least 370 seats on its own in this Lok Sabha election and more than 400 for the NDA.


The Election Commission is expected to announce the poll schedule later this month and the elections are likely to be held in April-May. The BJP had won 303 seats in 2019 polls but currently it has 290 members in Lok Sabha, the number decreasing for various reasons including due to some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls.


The BJP’s Central Election Committee (CEC) had met for over five hours on Thursday night and deliberated on names for their first list. The CEC members, which included 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 had met Modi at his residence to hold consultations. The next CEC meeting is expected to be held next week to discuss further names.