The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday released the second list of candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
While the first list released earlier this month had 195 names, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and top leaders including Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Wednesday's list has 72 candidates and includes Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Pralhad Joshi, and Anurag Thakur.
Wednesday's list also includes three former chief ministers. There are also notable exemptions, such as former Union minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' is not being fielded from his seat of Hardwar in Uttarakhand. So far, six of the seven candidates for Lok Sabha seats in Delhi are also fresh faces, indicating that the BJP is gearing up for anti-incumbency against sitting Delhi MPs in the face of the Congress-Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) combine.
Here we explain the significance of the BJP's second list of candidates for 2024 general elections and list the key constituencies and candidates.
Key Candidates In BJP's 2nd List
The second list of the BJP contains the names of senior Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, and Pralhad Joshi.
While Gadkari is the Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways and a political heavyweight from Maharashtra, Goyal too comes from a politically influential family in Maharashtra and is currently the Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha. A three-term Rajya Sabha MP, Goyal is going to contest the Lok Sabha elections for the first time in the 2024 general elections. He holds the commerce and industry, consumer affairs and food and public distribution, and textiles portfolios in the Modi ministry. Joshi holds the parliamentary affairs and coal and mines portfolios.
Gadkari is being fielded from his home-turf of Nagpur Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra, Goyal from Mumbai North, and Joshi from Dharwad in Karnataka.
Besides the three senior ministers, Union minister Anurag Thakur, the son of former Himachal Pradesh CM Prem Kumar Dhumal, is also being fielded from his home-turf of Hamirpur in Himachal. He holds the youth affairs and sports and information and broadcasting portfolios in the Modi ministry.
In its second list of candidates, the BJP has also fielded three former chief ministers: Basavaraj Bommai of Karnataka where the BJP lost power in last year's assembly elections, Manohar Lal Khattar who resigned as the CM of Haryana on Tuesday, and Trivendra Singh Rawat of Uttarakhand, who was the first of the two CMs of the state to be changed within months in 2021 in the run-up to assembly elections.
In Delhi, six of the seven sitting MPs have been dropped by the BJP and only Manoj Tiwari has been retained on the Northeast Delhi seat. The MPs dropped are Harsh Vardhan from Chandni Chowk, East Delhi MP Gautam Gambhir who had requested to be discharged of political duties, New Delhi MP Meenakashi Lekhi, Northwest Delhi MP Hans Raj Hans, Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi, and Parvesh Sahib Singh from West Delhi.
The new candidates from Delhi are: Harsh Malhotra from East Delhi, Yogendra Chandolia from Northwest Delhi, Praveen Khandelwal from Chandni Chowk, Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi, Kamaljeet Sehrawat from West Delhi, and Ramvir Singh Bidhuri from South Delhi.
Key Constituencies In BJP's 2nd List
Besides the heavyweights mentioned above, there are a number of headline-making constituencies for which the BJP also announced candidates in the second list.
These constituencies include the coastal belt of Karnataka where communal polarisation has been a running theme in recent years. The region has made headlines for hijab ban by Karnataka's previous BJP government and other issues along communal lines.
In Dakshin Kannada, the BJP has fielded Brijesh Chowta. In Udupi, the party has fielded Kota Srinivas Poojary. In Shivmoga, the party has fielded BY Raghvendra.
In Bengaluru South, the BJP has fielded Tejasvi Surya, the young leader who has made headlines in recent years over his statements.
In Chhindwara, the home-turf of Congress veteran and former Madhya Pradesh CM Kamal Nath, the BJP has fielded Vivek 'Bunty' Sahu. The contest on the seat is one of the most keenly-watched in the state.
