Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Saturday announced former Chief Minister of Tripura and sitting RS MP from the State, Biplab Kumar Deb as the candidate from West Tripura Lok Sabha Constituency on Saturday. At present the constituency is represented by Pratima Bhoumik who is also a Minister of State in the Union cabinet.
Incumbent Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha congratulated Deb. In a social media post, Dr Saha wrote, “I extend my heartfelt congratulations and best wishes to Shri Biplab Kumar Deb, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for the West Tripura Lok Sabha constituency in the state. I firmly believe that under the able leadership of Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji, with the overwhelming public support, the formation of an NDA government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party is now only a matter of time”.
The sitting MP from the West LS seat, Pratima Bhoumik also congratulated Biplab kumar Deb for being nominated as the BJP candidate from the West LS seat for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
However, the ruling party is yet to announce its candidate from the East (ST reserve) Lok Sabha Constituency.
Meantime, our New Delhi correspondent said : The BJP Saturday released its first list of 195 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, naming Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its nominee from Varanasi for a third time.
The list contains the names of 34 Union ministers, including heavyweights like Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh from their current Gandhinagar and Lucknow seats respectively.
Two former chief ministers — Biplab Kumar Deb (Tripura) and Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh) — also figure in the list.
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla will fight again from Kota in Rajasthan, while Shivraj Singh Chouhan returns to his former parliamentary constituency Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, which he represented for five terms before taking over as the state’s chief minister in 2005.
The first list comes after BJP Central Election Committee (CEC) met for more than five hours on Thursday night and deliberated on names. The next CEC meeting is expected to be held next week to discuss more names.
Sitting MPs including Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi, former Union minister Harsh Vardhan and Ramesh Bidhuri have been dropped. Bidhuri was recently in the news for his controversial comments against opposition MP Danish Ali.
Besides Lekhi, Union minister John Barla (Alipurduar) and Rameswar Teli (Dibrugarh) have also been dropped. Another noticeable name that did not find a mention in this list is Sadhvi Pragya Thakur from Bhopal. Thakur, whose controversial utterances have drawn flak several times, has been dropped.
The party has fielded one Muslim candidate: Abdul Salam from Malappuram in Kerala.
Modi had contested from Varanasi for first time in 2014 as he led the BJP to its maiden majority in Lok Sabha. Since then, Uttar Pradesh has become a saffron citadel, with the party sweeping Lok Sabha and assembly elections in the state.
The Election Commission is expected to announce the poll schedule later this month and the elections are likely to be held in April-May. The BJP had won 303 seats in 2019 polls but currently it has 290 members in Lok Sabha, the number decreasing for various reasons including due to some MPs recently resigning after winning assembly polls.
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