The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced the first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The list has covered 16 states and two Union Territories, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Kerala, West Bengal and Jharkhand.

The BJP announced candidates on 51 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 24 from Madhya Pradesh, 15 each from Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 from Kerala, 9 seats from Telangana, 11 from Assam, 11 each from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, 5 from Delhi, 2 from J&K, 3 from Uttarakhand, 2 from Arunachal Pradesh and 1 each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman & Nicobar and Daman & Diu.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest the Lok Sabha elections from his sitting Varanasi constituency, while Home Minister Amit Shah will once again be the BJP candidate from Gandhinagar.

The first list has 34 ministers, including Smriti Irani, Rajiv Chandrashekhar, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Jyotiraditya Scindia, and Rajnath Singh.

While Irani will once against contest from Amethi, Chandrashekhar will likely face off Congress stalwart Shashi Tharoor in his Kerala stronghold Thiruvananthapuram.

Jitendra Singh will be BJP’s Lok Sabha elections candidate from Udhampur, Rajnath Singh from Lucknow, Meghwal from Bikaner and Gajendra Singh Shekhawat from Jodhpur.

Senior Congress leader and former Union minister AK Antony’s son Anil Antony, who joined the saffron party last year, has been fielded from Pathanamthitta.

The other heavyweights in the BJP’s first list include Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West, Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh, Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar, Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi, and Nishikant Dubey from Godda.

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha, Bhupendra Yadav from Alwar, Om Birla from Kota, Bandi Sanjay Kumar from Karimnagar, G Kishen Reddy from Secunderabad, Biplab Deb from Tripura West, Ajay Mishra from Teni Lakhimpur Kheri, Hema Malini from Mathura, Sakshi Maharaj from Unnao, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti from Fatehpur, Ravi Kishan from Gorakhpur, Nirahua from Azamgarh, and Locket Chatterjee from Hooghly are the other major names in the list.

Check constituency-wise first list of BJP 195 candidates for Lok Sabha polls

BJP releases first list of 195 candidates for Lok Sabha elections pic.twitter.com/ms1zTtzLfL

— ANI (@ANI) March 2, 2024

The candidates were finalised after a marathon Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting of the BJP on March 1. The CEC meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was attended by Amit Shah, JP Nadda and chief minister from BJP-ruled states along with other senior leaders of the party.

The BJP has set a highly ambitious target of winning 370 seats on its own, while the same for the NDA is 400-plus.