Lok Sabha elections 2024: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday released its second list of 72 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The list features several prominent faces, including Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal and former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Khattar, who resigned as chief minister on Tuesday and as an MLA today, has been fielded from Karnal. Gadkari will contest from his stronghold Nagpur, while Piyush Goyal will be BJP’s candidate from Mumbai North.
Union Minister Anurag Thakur will contest from Himachal Pradesh’s Hamirpur, former Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai from Haveri, and BJP MP Tejasvi Surya from Bangalore South.
Former Uttarakhand chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat has been named BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Haridwar, while Anil Baluni will contest from Garhwal.
Ashok Tanwar from Sirsa, Chaudhary Dharambir Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, Rao Inderjit Singh Yadav from Gurgaon, BY Raghavendra from Shimoga, Shobha Karandlaje from Bangalore North, Bharati Pravin Pawar from Dindori, Pankaja Munde from Beed, and DK Aruna from Mahbubnagar also featured in the list.
Notably, the BJP has named it’s candidates on 20 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra where seat-sharing talks with Shiv Sena (Shinde) and NCP (Ajit Pawar) are still underway.
The BJP has also announced candidates on 26 Karnataka seats in the second list of candidates. The saffron party is contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Karnataka in an alliance with HD Deve Gowda’s JDS.
Of the 10 Haryana seats, the BJP has announced candidates on six. The announcement comes a day after the saffron party broke its alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) after seat-sharing talks between them failed.
The second list of candidates comes two days after BJP held its Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting at party headquarters in Delhi.