Lok Sabha polls 2024: Gadkari, Khattar, Goyal in BJP second list, 28 MPs dropped

Manohar Lal Khattar, who resigned as Haryana Chief Minister Tuesday and vacated his Karnal Assembly seat Wednesday, has been fielded from the Karnal Lok Sabha constituency.

While Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has been retained from Nagpur, his colleague Piyush Goyal, Leader of the House in Rajya Sabha, will be contesting from Mumbai North.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi has been fielded again from Dharwad in Karnataka while Union Minister of State Shobha Karandlaje has been moved from Udupi Chikmagalur to the Bangalore North constituency.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur will again contest from the Hamirpur constituency in Himachal Pradesh.

BJP’s media cell head Anil Baluni, who is currently a Rajya Sabha MP, has been fielded from Uttarakhand’s Garhwal constituency. Tejasvi Surya, who heads the party’s youth wing, has been retained in Bangalore South.

Former Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will contest from Haveri. He is the fifth former CM to be handed the party ticket – the first list had Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) and Biplab Kumar Deb (Tripura) while the second list named Khattar, Bommai and former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat who will be in the fray for the Haridwar seat.

Rawat replaces former CM and former Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal in Haridwar.

The BJP Central Election Committee has decided on the following names for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

(1/2) pic.twitter.com/5ByPC2xoW1

— BJP (@BJP4India) March 13, 2024

The second list also has surprises in Delhi — Harsh Malhotra will be the BJP face in East Delhi and Yogendra Chandolia in the SC-reserved North West Delhi.

In Maharashtra’s Beed constituency, once represented by Gopinath Munde, the party has replaced the late leader’s daughter Pritam Munde with her sister Pankaja Munde, a BJP national secretary and a prominent state party leader.

The BJP has dropped Sunita Duggal, one of the most vocal MPs in Lok Sabha, in Sirsa and has fielded Ashok Tanwar who joined the BJP recently from AAP, a party he had joined after leaving the Congress.

In another surprise move, the BJP also replaced Union Minister of State Darshana Jardosh in Surat with Mukeshbhai Chandrakant Dalal.

Union Ministers of State Rao Inderjit Singh (Gurgaon), Krishan Pal Gurjar (Faridabad), Bhagwanth Khuba (Bidar) and Bharati Pawar (Dindori, Maharashtra) have found place in the list.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Kalaben Delkar has been handed the BJP ticket from Dadra and Nagar Haveli. She is the wife of the late Mohanbhai Delkar who used to be the MP from the constituency. After his death, Kalaben Delkar joined Shiv Sena and won the 2021 by-election.

Also in the second list is cardiac surgeon C N Manjunath, son-in-law of former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, and he will be contesting on the BJP ticket from Bangalore Rural.

The BJP has dropped its two sitting MPs in Tripura too – after Union Minister of State Pratima Bhoumik made way for Biplab Kumar Deb in Tripura West in the first list, the Tripura East seat, reserved for ST, has gone to Maharani Kriti Singh Debbarma, elder sister of Tipra Motha founder and royal scion Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma.

Pratap Simha, who landed in a spot after his office provided visitor passes to men who had jumped with smoke canisters from the Lok Sabha gallery to the chamber last December, has been dropped in Mysore — the ticket has gone to Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar of the erstwhile royal family.

Former Karnataka party unit president Nalin Kateel has been replaced by Brijesh Chowta in Dakshin Kannada.

The BJP has also given a ticket to late party MP Rattan Lal Kataria’s wife Banto Kataria in Ambala constituency.

In Karnataka’s Davanagere, the BJP has replaced veteran party leader G M Siddeshwara, who had been representing the constituency since 2004, with his wife Gayathri Siddeshwara. His father G Mallikarjunappa was also a Lok Sabha MP for two terms – 1996-1998 and 1999-2002. B Y Vijayendra, son of former Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, has been retained in Shimoga.

But the decision to field V Somanna in Tumkur, a disgruntled leader who had taken swipes at the party leaders publicly, has raised some eyebrows in BJP circles. A party leader from Karnataka said the move could send a “wrong signal” about discipline, but sources pointed out that with the party setting a target of 370 seats, its primary criterion for finalising the name of a candidate has been the winnability factor.

The winnability factor is one of the key takeaways from the list. Those who lost in states where the BJP is strong have mostly been replaced, but those who gave a good fight before losing in Telangana — where the BJP is weak — have been retained.

Nathansaha Kawreti, who lost to Congress leader Kamal Nath’s son Nakul Nath from Chhindwara in 2019 by a margin of 37,536 votes, has been replaced this time by Vivek Bunty Sahu. The OBC Sahus have a significant presence in Chhindwara.

Veteran BJP leader Hansraj Ahir, who lost from Chandrapur in 2019, has been replaced by Sudhir Mungantiwar. Similarly, Ashwath Narayangowda of the BJP, who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Bengaluru (rural) to the Congress’s DK Suresh by more than 2 lakh votes, has been replaced by CN Manjunath.

The party has been kinder to candidates who put up a good fight in Telangana the last time. In Medak in 2019, M Raghunandan Rao stood third but got over 2 lakh votes, a fraction below the Congress candidate who stood second. He has been fielded again this time. But candidates fielded in 2019 from Peddapalli, Nalgonda and Mahabubabad, who all polled below 1 lakh votes – the last one just 25,000 – have been replaced by new faces.