File photo of Union Minister Manish Tewari.
Union minister Manish Tewari will not contest Lok Sabha polls and his Ludhiana seat in Punjab has been given to Ravneet Singh Bittu, a grandson of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.
This brings to an end the speculation over Mr Tewari's candidature, who was reporting sick and is understood to have expressed his unwillingness to contest from Ludhiana on this ground.
There was speculation that Mr Tewari wanted to shift to Chandigarh seat, however, former Union minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was renominated.
Bittu, the sitting MP from Anandpur Sahib was not keen on contesting from his seat from where the party fielded AICC general secretary Ambika Soni.
Jalandhar MP Mohinder Singh Kaypee has been fielded from Hoshiarpur while Santokh Singh Choudhary has been fielded from Jalandhar.
With this, Mr Tewari joins the league of a number of senior party leaders who are not in fray this time. P Chidambaram, A K Antony, G K Vasan and Jayanti Natarajan are some of them.