BJP's first list of Lok Sabha candidates: Of continuity and winnability

The party is refielding 108 MPs in the list of 195 but there are a few who have been denied ticket

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced its candidates for 195 Lok Sabha constituencies across 16 states and Union Territories, including 151 seats that the party had previously won in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The party’s focus is on “winnability”, and as such, it has fielded 108 of its sitting MPs.

In 2019, the BJP had dropped 99 of its 268 sitting MPs (of the 282 seats it won in 2014, a few were lost in by-elections over the following five years).

The BJP has also accommodated recent imports from other parties due to the “winnability” factor. They include Kripashankar Singh, a former Congress leader from Maharashtra, who has been fielded from Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur. Other notable names include Geeta Kora (Singhbhum, from the Congress), Jyoti Mirdha (Nagaur, from the Congress), Ritesh Pandey (Ambedkar Nagar, from the Bahujan Samaj Party), and B B Patil (Zaheerabad; from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi).

Kripashankar joined the BJP in July 2021, at a time when central probe agencies were investigating a case of disproportionate assets against him. Kora, the wife of former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Kora, Pandey, and others have joined the party recently.

At the same time, the BJP has denied party tickets to several Union Ministers and MPs, including Meenakshi Lekhi, John Barla, Pragya Singh Thakur, Ramesh Bidhuri, and Jayant Sinha. Ten of the sitting MPs denied tickets had won the Assembly polls in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh in December 2023 and subsequently quit their Lok Sabha memberships.

A day after the BJP declared its list, its Asansol candidate, Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh, expressed his inability to contest from the constituency. This came after the Trinamool Congress launched a social media campaign against him, labelling his songs and videos as “sexist”, “misogynist”, and insulting to Bengali women. The controversy has arisen against the backdrop of the BJP’s preparations to mark International Women's Day on March 8 and organise political rallies to highlight alleged sexual harassment of women in North 24 Parganas’ Sandeshkhali by Trinamool leaders.

On Sunday, former Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan announced his retirement from electoral politics on X. The BJP has replaced him with Praveen Khandelwal, from the Confederation of All India Traders, for the Chandni Chowk seat in Delhi. Harsh Vardhan won from Delhi’s Chandni Chowk in 2014 and 2019.

In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has announced its candidates for 51 seats. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Varanasi, and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh will contest from Lucknow. The BJP won 44 of these seats in 2019, and later two more -- Azamgarh and Rampur -- in Lok Sabha bypolls.

The party is yet to announce candidates for 29 seats, including Pilibhit and Sultanpur, which were represented by Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun in 2014 and 2019, and Kaiserganj, represented by former Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

In the list for UP, the BJP has not replaced any of the 46 sitting MPs. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party did not repeat its candidates on 20 seats in UP, including senior leaders Murli Manohar Joshi, Uma Bharti, and Kalraj Mishra. Notably, actor Hema Malini will again contest from Mathura, despite crossing the BJP's unwritten rule of not fielding those above 75 years. Other highlights include the party fielding Saket Misra, son of former principal secretary to the prime minister Nripendra Misra, from Uttar Pradesh's Shravasti.

In Delhi, the BJP has announced its candidates for five of the seven seats, deciding to drop four of its sitting MPs, including Lekhi. The New Delhi seat, held by the two-term MP, will now be contested by Bansuri Swaraj, a lawyer and the daughter of the late Sushma Swaraj.

In Kerala’s Pathanamthitta, the BJP has fielded Anil Antony, son of the former Defence Minister and Congress leader A K Antony. Of its 195 candidates, the party has chosen Abdul Salam, its lone Muslim candidate from Kerala's Malappuram, as part of its outreach to Christians and Muslims in the state, in a bid to secure its first Lok Sabha win in the state.

In Assam, the BJP has replaced five sitting MPs and re-nominated four. Meanwhile, in Chhattisgarh, the party has announced candidates for all 11 seats. It had won nine seats in the state in 2019, and of those, only two MPs have been repeated. In Gujarat, the BJP has announced 15 candidates, replacing five and re-nominating 10. In Jharkhand, the party has announced 11 candidates, including on nine sitting seats, replacing only two of its sitting MPs, including Hazaribagh MP Jayant Sinha.

In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has announced 24 candidates for the state’s 29 seats, where it had won 28 five years back. The party has repeated 12 sitting MPs and replaced 12. In Rajasthan, the BJP has announced 15 candidates, repeating eight and replacing six sitting MPs. In 2019, the BJP supported Rashtriya Loktantrik Party’s Hanuman Beniwal from the Nagaur seat. Beniwal won but exited the National Democratic Alliance after the 2020-21 farm protests. The BJP has now fielded Mirdha from the Nagaur seat.