The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday announced 72 more candidates from across 11 states for the Lok Sabha elections.
Union ministers Nitin Gadkari, Anurag Thakur, Pralhad Joshi and Piyush Goyal and former chief ministers Manohar Lal Khattar, Trivendra Singh Rawat and Basavaraj Bommai have found place in the second list.
Gadkari will contest from Nagpur in Maharashtra while Joshi has been fielded from Karnataka’s Dharwad. Goyal will face his debut Lok Sabha contest from Mumbai North while Thakur will seek re-election from Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh.
Khattar, who resigned as Haryana chief minister on Tuesday, has been fielded from Karnal. Among the other ex-chief ministers, Bommai will contest from Haveri and Rawat from Haridwar.
The ruling party, meanwhile, dropped former Union ministers Sadananda Gowda and Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank' from their seats.
Tejasvi Surya, the BJP's youth wing chief, will seek re-election from Bengaluru South. In Mysore seat, Yaduveer Krishnadatta Wadiyar of the erstwhile Mysore royal family has replaced Pratap Simha.
Former chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa's son B.Y. Raghwendra will contest from Shimoga again.
In Delhi, the party has fielded two new candidates—Harsh Malhotra from East Delhi and Yogendra Chandolia from North West Delhi.
In Uttarakhand, Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni has been fielded from Garhwal.
Of the 72 seats for which the party announced its candidates, 20 each were from Maharashtra and Karnataka, seven from Gujarat, six each from Haryana and Telangana, five from Madhya Pradesh, two each from Delhi, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, and one each from Tripura, and Dadar & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu.
In its first list announced on March 2, the saffron party had announced 195 candidates including 34 union ministers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest against from Varanasi while Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh from their current Gandhinagar and Lucknow seats, respectively.
