Santosh Ahlawat was dropped in favour of Mandawa legislator Narendra Khinchal.
Jaipur: The list of 16 Rajasthan candidates announced by the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections on Thursday evening was along expected lines. All the current parliamentarians were repeated in the list, with the exception of Jhunjhunu lawmaker Santosh Ahlawat.
Ms Ahlawat - the only woman lawmaker from Rajasthan - was dropped in favour of Narendra Khinchal, the party legislator from Mandawa. While both are Jat leaders, the vote from the community had swung slightly towards the Congress in the December assembly elections.
The BJP government had won all 25 seats in the state on the back of the Modi wave last time, a performance that will be difficult to repeat in the upcoming elections. However, it still hopes to win over 50% of the seats this time.
While former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje will not fight the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP has fielded her son - three-time parliamentarian Dushyant Singh - from Jhalawar. Reports suggest that although the BJP wanted to give Ms Raje a ticket because it was keen on making her play a more active role in national politics, she did not approve of the idea.
Other Union ministers to be repeated in their constituencies are Arjun Ram Meghwal, PP Chaudhary, Gajendra Shekhawat and Rajyawardhan Rathore. Nine more names are yet to be announced.
The Lok Sabha elections will be held in two phases in the state, where 13 constituencies will go to the polls on April 29 and the remaining 12 on May 6.
PM Modi will contest from Varanasi, the same constituency he had won in the 2014 polls. While Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will fight the elections from Lucknow, the party has decided to field Roadways Minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur, an RSS stronghold. BJP chief Amit Shah replaced veteran leader LK Advani as the candidate from Gujarat's Gandhinagar, provoking the Congress to accuse the party leadership of "sidelining" seniors.