New Delhi, March 21
The BJP today released its third list
of 52 candidates for the coming Lok Sabha elections, in which party’s Punjab
unit president Avinash Rai Khanna had been nominated from the Hoshiarpur seat.
The party deferred decision on Haryana to March 23.
The BJP’s Central Election
Committee (CEC), which met at Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s residence
here, took just a few minutes to decide on the candidature of Mr Khanna for the
Hoshiarpur seat, which was being held by a Congress leader Charanjit Singh in
the 13th Lok Sabha.
Mr Khanna, who is an MLA from the Garhshankar constituency,
had resigned last month as a leader of the BJP’s legislative party to take over
as the party’s Punjab unit president.
Meanwhile, the CEC did not disclose the
name of the candidate for the Amritsar constituency even as the names of Union
Law Minister Arun Jaitley and cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu were doing
rounds.
According the party sources, the CEC deferred the decision on
candidates for Haryana and Rajasthan to March 23, when it would meet again, as
it could not take up the lists for discussion.
In Uttaranchal the party
decided to renominate its sitting MPs Maharaja Manabendra Shah and Harpal Singh
Sathi from Tehri Garhwal and Hardwar (SC) LS seats, respectively.
The CEC
meeting, which was on for about five hours, decided to drop former Union
Minister V. Dhananjaya Kumar from the Mangalore seat in Karnataka even as it
renominated 13 sitting MPs, including one Union Minister each in Andhra Pradesh
and Karnataka.
The BJP’s list included 20 candidates from Karnataka, 11 from
Uttar Pradesh, six from Kerala, five from Andhra Pradesh, two each from Bihar,
Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Arunachal Pradesh and one each from Punjab and
Maharashtra.
Besides, the CEC also announced candidates for five Assembly seats
in UP, 15 in Orissa and 125 in Karnataka.
In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP had given
ticket to three new comers. Former Congress Leader and Union Minister Arif
Mohammad Khan had been given ticket from the minority-dominated Kaisarganj,
while Choudhary Yash Pal Singh, who joined the party only yesterday, had been
fielded from Saharanpur. Naresh Malik, who joined the party early this month had
been fielded from the Baghpat seat.
Speaker of Uttar Pradesh Assembly
Kesarinath Tripathi had been nominated from Macchilishahar, while the party had
decided to field a weak candidate, Parmatmanand Tiwary, in Balia, the home
constituency of former Prime Minister Chandrashekar.
The BJP’s decision to
release the names for 20 of the 26 LS constituencies and 125 candidates for the
224-seat state Assembly, clearly reflected the party’s decision not to succumb
to the pressure tactics adopted by one of its prominent NDA allies JD(U), which
had been demanding a greater share of seats there.
Among those re-nominated in
Karnataka included, former Union Minister and party’s state unit president
Ananth Kumar from Bangalore (south), former Karnataka Chief Minister S
Bangarappa from Shimoga (he had joined the BJP recently) and D V Sadanand Gowda
from Mangalore in place of former Union Minister Dhananjaya Kumar.
According to
party General Secretary and CEC convener Pramod Mahajan, the BJP would not
project any person as chief ministerial candidate in Karnataka. “A decision on
this will be made only after elections,” he said.
In Bihar, it had renominated
Lal Muni Choubey from Buxar, while Udai Singh had been given the Purnea
seat.
The BJP today decided to leave Nalanda Parliamentary seat in Bihar for
NDA convener George Fernandes, the seat represented by him in the dissolved Lok
Sabha.
From Muzaffarpur in Bihar, the party decided to field sitting MP Capt
Jai Narain Prasad Nishad, the sources said.
Earlier, there was a talk of Mr
Fernandes shifting his constituency to Muzaffarpur, they said, adding with Mr
Fernandes agreeing to contest from Nalanda, the candidature of Mr Nishad was
almost clear.
In Orissa, the party would contest 63 out of 147 Assembly seats,
the sources said adding BJP’s candidates for all but seven seats had been
finalised.
The BJP has already declared candidates for nine out of 21 Lok Sabha
seats it is contesting in the state.
