Arun Govil, the actor who played Lord Ram in the popular Ramayan serial, is in the list of BJP’s 111 candidates announced on Sunday as it also has a few major drops like two Union ministers, V K Singh from Ghaziabad and Ashwini Choubey from Buxar in Bihar, while UP minister Jitin Prasada has replaced controversial Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit even as his mother Maneka Gandhi has been repeated from Sultanpur.
Prominent actress Kangana Ranaut has been named from Mandi in Himachal Pradesh, where she will take on Congress state president and incumbent MP Pratibha Singh, a signal that the party will make no concessions for the Congress leader, whose son Vikramaditya Singh, a minister in the state, has been rebellious against his party leadership.
Jitin Prasada, originally from Congress, had joined BJP before the last assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. Son of former deputy PM Devilal, Ranjit Chautala, has also figured in the list from Hisar in Haryana, being rewarded minutes after joining the party.
BJP also fielded its Kerala unit president K Surendra against Rahul Gandhi in Wayanad. Senior BJP leader and one of the prominent OBC faces of the party, Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan has been fielded from Sambalpur in Odisha, making a return to electoral politics after 2009. He was elected to LS from Deogarh in 2004, but lost the seat in 2009 and was accommodated in Rajya Sabha.
Govil, who has replaced incumbent Rajendra Agrawal from Meerut, had contested Lok Sabha polls as a Congress nominee unsuccessfully against former PM VP Singh in Allahabad Rural bypoll in 1988.
So far, the BJP has released five lists with 398 candidates Mithilesh Tiwari, state general secretary of the party and an ex MLA, has replaced Ashwini Choubey in Buxar while V KSingh has been replaced by MLA Atul Garg in Ghaziabad in UP. Rama Devi and Chhedi Paswan are the other prominent omissions.
BJP names 6 candidates from Gujarat
The BJP named candidates for six more Lok Sabha constituencies in Gujarat, including Vadodara, Sabarkantha, Mehsana, Surendranagar, Junagadh and Amreli. Of the six, five are new faces. Only one MP, Rajesh Chudasama, has been repeated from the Junagadh seat. With this, the BJP has now nominated candidates for all 26 seats in Gujarat.
The party nominated Hemang Joshi for the Vadodara seat after sitting MP Ranjan Bhatt withdrew her candidature. Joshi is a physiotherapist and an HR professional who was recently elected as the vice-chairman of the municipal school board of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation. This is the first major post that he has been assigned. Joshi is among the youngest persons to be fielded by the party on the seat.
Similarly, the party named Shobhna Baraiya as its candidate from Sabarkantha after Bhikhaji Thakor withdrew his candidature. For the Mehsana seat, the party named Haribhai Patel, a member of the Mehsana district panchayat. Chandubhai Shihora has been named candidate from the Surendranagar seat. In Amreli, the party fielded Bharat Sutariya, the president of the district panchayat.