Joshi among 8 denied BJP ticket, seats of Maneka, Varun swapped

Days after denying tickets to party veterans L.K. Advani and Shanta Kumar, the BJP on Tuesday kept out Murli Manohar Joshi from the list of candidates and instead fielded Uttar Pradesh Minister Satyadev Pachauri from Kanpur won by him in 2014.

A list issued by the Bharatiya Janata Party included 29 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and 10 from West Bengal.

Among the 29 candidates, the party denied tickets to eight of its sitting MPs, shifted two of the MPs to other constituencies and swapped the seats of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi.

Varun Gandhi will now contest from Pilibhit and Maneka Gandhi from Sultanpur.

Besides Joshi, those sitting MPs denied tickets are Vijay Dubey (Kushinagar), Bharat Singh (Ballia), Nepal Singh (Rampur), Akshay Kumar Dohrey (Etawah), Shyama Charan Gupta (Allahabad), Priyanka Singh Rawat (Barabanki) and Savitri Bai Phule (Bahraich).

Minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, Rita Bahuguna Joshi, will contest from Allahabad. Shyama Charan Gupta, the outgoing BJP MP from Allahabad, recently joined the Samajwadi Party.

In Bahraich, the party has fielded Akshaywarlal Gaud in place of outgoing MP Phule. She has now joined Congress.

Denying ticket to Nepal Singh, the party has fielded Jaya Prada, who joined the BJP on Tuesday, against Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan in Rampur.

Ballia MP Bharat Singh has been replaced by Bhadohi MP Virendra Singh Mast while the sitting Agra MP Ram Shankar Katheria has been asked to contest from Etawah, the seat represented by Dohrey.

In Kushinagar, the party has fielded former MLA Rajesh Pandey replacing Vijay Dubey. The Barabanki MP has been replaced by MLA Upendra Rawat.

The party has reposed its faith on 20 sitting MPs including Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha, who has retained his Gazipur seat.

Others included Kirtiwardhan Singh (Gonda), Jagdambika Pal (Domariyaganj), Harish Dwivedi (Basti), Pankaj Chaudhary (Maharajganj), Kamlesh Paswan (Bansgaon), Ravindra Kushwaha (Salempur), Mahendra Nath Pandey (Chandauli), Rekha Verma (Dhaurahra), Mukesh Rajput (Farrukhabad), Devendra Singh Bhole (Akbarpur), Bhanu Pratap Verma (Jalaun), Pushpendra Singh Chandel (Hamirpur), Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti (Fatehpur), Vinod Sonkar (Kaushambi), Lallu Singh (Faizabad), Brijbhushan Sharan Singh (Kaisarganj) and Daddan Mishra (Shravasti).

The party has fielded Subrat Pathak from Kannauj against Dimple Yadav, the wife of former UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

In West Bengal, the party has fielded Humayun Kabir, aAformer minister in the Trinamool Congress government from Murshidabad.AKabir hails from Murshidabad district and has been in the Congress after he was expelled by the Trinamool in 2015 for his anti-party activities. Later, heAjoined the BJP.

Former film star Joy Banerjee will contest from the Uluberia constituency. Apart from party leaders, the BJP has also fielded former journalist Rantidev Sen Gupta from the Howrah Lok Sabha seat.

Earlier, the BJP replaced Union Minister S.S. Ahluwalia in Darjeeling and fielded Raju Singh Bisht.

--IANSA

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