BJP releases 3rd list of candidates for Bengal polls

BJP today released its third list of 14 candidates for the West Bengal Assembly elections, taking the total number of seats for which it has announced nominees to 260 out of a total of 294 constituencies.
It also announced its first list of 22 candidates for Kerala Assembly polls and the names include that of its state chief Kummanam Rajasekharan, who will contest from Vattiyoorkavu, and O Rajagopal who is to be the candidate from Nemom.
In West Bengal, the party has left three seats, Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Kurseong, for its ally Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.
West Bengal will have elections over six phases between April 4 and May 5.

The list for Kerala was almost finalised at the Central Election Committee meeting held last week but was not released due to certain reasons, party sources said.
Earlier, at a party briefing, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who is also in charge of Tamil Nadu polls, said former BJP allies in the state like Vijayakanth of DMDK have to take a call on the alliance for the Assembly polls.

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Party sources in Thiruvananthapuram said there was no change in the names of 22 candidates proposed by the BJP state election committee.
There were reports that party central leadership was not happy with state BJP leaders for announcing the probable candidates in Kerala itself on March 13 without their approval and that there would be some changes in the first list.

Besides Rajasekaran and Rajagopal, other names in the list include former party president V Muraleedharan (Kazhakuttom), party general secretary K Surendran (Manjesaram) and firebrand leader Shobha Surendran(Palakkad).
Yesterday BJP had entered into a seat sharing agreement with Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, the new party formed by Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam, an outfit of the backward Ezhava community, led byits powerful general secretary Vellapally Natesan.
As per the agreement BDJS will contest in 37 of the 140 seats in the assembly.
BJP, which has so far not tasted victory in assembly and parliament polls in Kerala, this time succeeded in forming an NDA front by joining hands with BDJS and some other minor parties.