BJP releases 5th list of 48 Lok Sabha candidates

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday came out with its fifth list of 48 candidates, spanning the six states of Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka.

The list features three Union Ministers - Narendra Singh Tomar, Jayant Sinha and Shripad Yesso Naik and former minister Faggan Singh Kulaste.

Tomar will contest from Morena Lok Sabha constituency in Madhya Pradesh while Sinha retains his seat of Hazaribagh in Jharkhand. Yesso Naik will fight from North Goa while Kulaste from Mandla (ST) in Madhya Pradesh.

The list also features some other prominent names including Anurag Thakur who will contest from Hamirpur, and Nishikant Dubey who will fight from Godda in Jharkhand.

The fifth list has candidates for both of Goa's seats, 15 from Madhya Pradesh, 10 from Jharkhand, 15 from Gujarat, all four from Himachal and two from Karnataka.

The names were finalised on Friday in a meeting of the BJP's Central Election Committee (CEC) headed by party chief Amit Shah, and attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Nitin Gadkari among others.

The party also declared its candidates for Assembly by-polls for three seats each in Gujarat and Goa. The by-polls will be held along with Lok Sabha polls in the third phase on April 23.

--IANS

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