BJP 1st list for Lok Sabha: Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Amit Shah from Gandhinagar
The BJP on Saturday announced the first list of 195 contestants for the Lok Sabha election 2024. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be contesting from Varanasi, party general secretary Vinod Tawde announced. The first list includes the names of 34 central and ministers of state, two former chief ministers, Tawde said.
Apart from Narendra Modi, the heavyweights in the BJP’s 1st list include Kiren Rijiju from Arunachal West, Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh, Manoj Tiwari from North-east Delhi, Bansuri Swaraj from New Delhi, Amit Shah from Gandhinagar, Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar, CR Patil Nirahua, Nishikant Dubey from Godda.
The other major names include Suresh Gopi from Thrissur, Anil Antony from Pathanamthitta, Rajeev Chandrashekhar from Thiruvananthapuram, Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna, Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha, Arjun Meghwal from Bikaner, Bhupendra Yadav from Alwar, Gajendrasingh Sekhawat from Jodhpur, Om Birla from Kota, Bandi Sanjay Kumar from Karimnagar, G Kishen Reddy from Secunderabad.
Biplab Deb gets Tripura West, Ajay Mishra Teni Lakhimpur Kheri, Hema Malini Mathura, Smriti Irani Amethi, Sakshi Maharaj Unnao, Rajnath Singh Lucknow, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti Fatehpur, Ravi Kishan Gorakhpur, Nirahua Azamgarh, Locket Chatterjee Hooghly.
The party recently held back-to-back meetings in which the performance of the sitting MPs was thoroughly reviewed before the party decided on its warriors to shoulder the crucial Lok Sabha election 2024.
This will be the first election where NDA will be contesting against the united opposition of the INDIA bloc led by the Congress. Narendra Modi has already set a target of 370 seats for the BJP alone while the NDA expects to do ‘400 paar’.
Announcing the first list, Vinod Tawde said in the last 10 years Modi government set an unprecedented record of development work. “PM set 370 target for BJP alone and the aim is to expand more geographical areas and also to strengthen NDA. We are confident of a third term,” he said.
The first list of the BJP includes 28 women and 47 young leaders. The BJP won 303 seats in the 2019 polls but currently it has 290 members in Lok Sabha for various reasons including some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls.