Bihar Assembly Elections: BJP announces second list of candidates with 99 names

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced its second list of candidates for the upcoming Bihar Assembly Elections.

The list was announced by union minister JP Nadda after a meeting of the party's central election committee which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The list of candidates consists of doctors, engineers, lawyers and other professionals. Other than this we have tried to accommodate people from all sections of the society," he said at a press conference following the meeting.

"Seats of 14 current MLAs have been changed," he added.

Nadda also said that list consists of 60 percent youth.

With this, the BJP has announced 142 candidates of the 160 it will field in the five-phase poll to the 243-member Bihar assembly. The remaining 83 will be contested by its allies - the Lok Janshakti Party, Hindustani Awam Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party. 

The meeting at the BJP's central office was also attended by party president Amit Shah, union ministers Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Ananth Kumar, and Dharamendra Pradhan, party's state affairs in-charge Bhupendra Yadav, Bihar BJP chief Mangal Pandey, former state deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and former union minister Shahnawaz Hussain.

The BJP has fielded Buxar MP Ashwini Choubey's son Ajeet Sashwat from Bhagalpur whereas son of Rajya Sabha MP and former health minister CP Thakur, Vivek Thakur was given ticket from Brahmapur in Buxar district.

The BJP had on September 15 announced a list of 43 candidates after the first meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC).

Elections for the 243-member Bihar Assembly will take place between October 12 to November 5.