Vibha Sharma
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 24
The BJP on Sunday released its seventh list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, dropping five more sitting MPs in Chhattisgarh, including former Chief Minister Raman Singh’s son Abhishek Singh.
In the first list released on Thursday, the BJP had changed five sitting MPs in the state it lost badly to the Congress in the last Assembly elections.
On Sunday, it also put to rest speculation on whether Raman Singh will contest the Lok Sabha elections from his hometown Rajnandgaon, naming Santosh Pandey for the seat held by his son Abhishek in the list of nine candidates, including six for Chhattisgarh and one each for Meghalaya, Maharashtra and Telangana.
The BJP had won 10 of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
For the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, the ruling party has so far announced 306 candidates, repeating 123 sitting MPs, dropping 47 (including all 10 in Chhattisgarh). It has denied ticket to at least six veterans, including patriarch LK Advani, and some expected names like sitting Morena MP Anoop Mishra, nephew of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Yesterday in the sixth list of 48 candidates, the saffron party announced 15 for Madhya Pradesh, the state known as the ‘garh’ (bastion) of both the BJP and its ideological fountainhead RSS. It dropped five sitting MPs, including Vajpayee’s nephew.
It remains to be seen whether Mishra will be fielded from some other constituency, perhaps Gwalior, especially after losing the Assembly poll from Bhitarwar. Many see the decision as an end of the “Atal-Advani era. He has paid for speaking the truth,” they said.
Meanwhile, the party is trying to find “good, winnable” candidates for four important seats – Vidisha, Indore, Bhopal and Gwalior. Vidisha is the constituency of Union minister Sushma Swaraj who seems to be firm on her decision to not contest even though attempts are being made to convince her otherwise. Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan (75) has been representing Indore since 1989. From Bhopal, the Congress has fielded Digvijaya Singh. The Gwalior sitting MP, Union minister Narendra Singh Tomar, has been shifted to adjoining Morena, a seat he won in 2009. Sources say Mahajan is “keen to contest” and could be repeated.
The new faces from Madhya Pradesh include Ujjain candidate Anil Firojiya and Himadri Singh from Shahdol (ST seat). In 2014, the BJP had won 27 out of 29 seats in MP. With Shivraj Singh Chouhan and the BJP no longer in control there, the BJP is expected to shed several seats in the state.
So far, the BJP has dropped at least six veterans. In Saturday’s list, two veterans, Karia Munda from Khunti in Jharkhand and Shanta Kumar from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh, were missing.
Munda was Deputy Speaker of Lok Sabha between 2009 and 2014 and Shanta Kumar a former Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh. Karia Munda has been replaced by former Jharkhand CM Arjun Munda and Shanta Kumar by Dharamsala MLA Kishan Kapoor.
A key reason for dropping the veterans is their age. There seems to be an undeclared rule within the BJP not to field leaders over 75 years in age but some exceptions could be there depending upon their winnability.
The BJP has also declined tickets to Bhagat Singh Koshyari (76) and BC Khanduri (84) from Uttarakhand; Bijoya Chakravarty (79) from Guwahati; and Advani (91).
Advani has been replaced by BJP chief Amit Shah. The fate of Kanpur MP Murli Manohar Joshi (85) has not yet been decided.
Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha will contest from Hazaribagh, Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Sudarshan Bhagat from Lohardaga in Jharkhand and Minister of State for Ayush Shripad Yesso Naik from Goa North.
No place for veterans
- LK Advani
- Shanta Kumar
- Bhagat Singh Koshyari
- BC Khanduri
- Karia Munda
- Bijoya Chakravarty
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