Bhojpuri filmstar Ravi Kishan thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) once again reposed posed in him and fielded him from Gorakhpur for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, a seat he has held since the 2019 elections.
BJP on Saturday announced its first list of 195 candidates, which included PM Modi from Varanasi again.
This is the third time PM Modi will be contesting from the Varanasi seat. In 2014, he defeated AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal and in 2019, won against Samajwadi Party's Shalini Yadav.
"I want to thank the top leadership wholeheartedly... The organization gave me a second chance from the hottest seat after Kashi. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the entire organization and Prime Minister Modi. I will maintain this trust... BJP will win 400 seats and Gorakhpur seat will create history." BJP MP Ravi Kishan said.
Ravi Kishan, a well-known Bhojpuri actor, will run for office again from Gorakhpur, the stronghold of Yogi Adityanath. The current Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath held the seat till 2017.
Ravi Kishan won against SP candidate Rambhual Nishad in the 2019 election with a lead of more than 3 lakh votes.
The BJP Saturday released its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, days after a marathon meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) that was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, naming 34 Union Ministers, including heavyweights such as Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh from their current Gandhinagar and Lucknow seats respectively.
In the first list of 195 candidates, the BJP included 28 women, 47 youth, 27 Scheduled Castes, 18 Scheduled Tribes and 57 OBCs. The party announced 51 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, 24 in Madhya Pradesh, 15 each in Gujarat and Rajasthan, 20 for West Bengal, 12 in Kerala, 11 each for Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, nine in Telangana, five for Delhi, two for Jammu and Kashmir, two for Arunachal Pradesh, one for Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu also.
Of 195 candidates, 34 are Ministers from the Centre and States and two are the former Chief Ministers.
The first list of 195 candidates released by the BJP on Saturday, however, made some drastic changes in Delhi, it has decided to field only Manoj Tiwari, the sitting Lok Sabha member from northeast Delhi, and Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi has been replaced with young face Basuri Swaraj, daughter of late BJP veteran Sushma Swaraj, from New Delhi; former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been chosen to contest from Vidisha constituency in the state, Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota.
With Prime Minister Modi urging senior ministers from Rajya Sabha to contest Lok Sabha elections, the party fielded Union Ministers Bhupender Yadav from Alwar in Rajasthan, Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar and Parshottam Rupala from Rajkot (Gujarat), Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram, and V Muraleedharan from Attingal constituency.
Another Rajya Sabha member and national vice president of the BJP Saroj Pande will contest from the Korba Lok Sabha constituency in Chhattisgarh. Union Minister Rameshwar Teli is replaced by Cabinet minister and former Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the Dibrugarh (Assam) constituency.
Union Ministers who are being fielded from their sitting seats are Gajendra Shekhawat in Jodhpur, Smriti Irani in Amethi, SP Singh Baghel in Agra, Sanjeev Balyan in Muzaffarnagar, Ajay Mishra Teni in Kheri, Arjun Ram Meghwal in Bikaner, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in Fatehpur, Subhash Sarkar in Bankura and Nishit Pramanik in Cooch Behar.
Union ministers whose names have been announced by the BJP in the first list of candidates include Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Bhupender Yadav, Mansukh Mandaviya, Sarbananda Sonowal, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Arjun Ram Meghwal, G Kishan Reddy, Arjun Munda and Smriti Irani.
Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will fight from Porbandar.
Meanwhile, Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal formally joined the BJP-led NDA alliance on Saturday.
Chaudhary met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the national capital and announced the tie-up on his official X.
Notably, Chaudhary's RLS party was a part of the INDIA bloc and his alliance with the BJP will come as another strong blow to opposition unity, aiming to take on PM Modi in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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