For its third bid for power, BJP drops a fourth of its sitting MPs, more may follow

This time, the party has announced candidates for 405 seats. Adjusted for withdrawals and replacements, the party has already crossed the 400-mark in fielded candidates, thus still having a few dozen candidates left to field. This means that the number of sitting MPs not fielded will likely be larger than the last time, as more sitting MPs may not get tickets.

The strategy is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt at beating anti-incumbency by replacing the local faces. The PM has been emphasising in multiple rallies over the last few months that the ‘lotus’, the party’s symbol, should be the only candidate for all workers of the party – thus making each candidate replaceable, with none having the entitlement to demand tickets. The focus of the campaign is on the PM, his welfare schemes for different sections of society, and on what the party claims are his foreign and economic policy achievements.

A subset of the above strategy is that winnability remains a prime factor. This means that those who were ministers via the Rajya Sabha – including Dharmendra Pradhan, Bhupender Yadav and Rajeev Chandrashekhar — have been asked to throw their hats into the ring. This was a change Modi brought to the BJP’s electoral strategy as early as 2014, when he made even Arun Jaitley, then a long-standing Rajya Sabha MP, contest polls, which he lost to the Congress’s former Punjab CM Amarinder Singh.

Another feature of the Modi strategy is to field past Chief Ministers – who have already built some stature – in Lok Sabha polls. Shivraj Singh Chouhan was replaced as CM despite a thumping victory in last year’s Madhya Pradesh Assembly polls and fielded from Vidisha in the state. Manohar Lal Khattar was asked to step down as Haryana CM this month and fielded from Karnal.

A third aspect of this strategy is to field those who crossed over to the party from the Congress. This includes the likes of Naveen Jindal – whose name as the party candidate from Kurukshetra was announced minutes after he formally joined the BJP late on Sunday – or Ashok Tanwar, who was fielded from Sirsa soon after he joined the BJP. Such names also include those who crossed over in the last few years – like Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna and Jitin Prasada from Pilibhit, where he replaced Varun Gandhi, who had made statements critical of the party.

These apart, there are candidates who, party sources say, have either become unpopular and lost touch with party workers or have crossed the line by making statements that embarrassed the party leadership. Such candidates may lose their seats and be replaced, whatever their stature or seniority. Sitting MPs Meenakshi Lekhi, Ramesh Bidhuri, Sadananda Gowda, Varun Gandhi and Pragya Thakur fall in this category so far.