The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) maintained the suspense over the seats from which its mainline leaders will contest as it declared its third list of candidates from West Bengal, Kerala, Tripura, Karnataka, Odisha and Assam on Saturday.
The party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), which includes top leaders Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, L K Advani, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Murli Manohar Joshi met at 10 am on Saturday. But after a long meeting, the CEC did not declare candidates for a majority of the States where polls are scheduled as early as April 10.
The party has a significant presence in Haryana, Delhi, 10 seats of Uttar Pradesh and nine seats of Madhya Pradesh where polling is scheduled for April 10. But no candidates were strangely declared for any of these seats.
In fact, barring Karnataka, the BJP does not have a significant presence in any of the States for which the candidates were declared on Saturday.
In the list announced on Saturday, former Chief Minister of Karnataka B. S. Yeddyurappa’s re-induction in the BJP was welcomed with the announcement of his candidature from Shimoga. His successor D. V. Sadananda Gowda was picked as the party candidate from Bangalore North. Ananth Kumar, the sitting MP from Bangalore South, was fielded once again in the list declared on Saturday.
Media personality Chandan Mitra’s candidature was announced from Hooghly in West Bengal, while in neighbouring Assam, a majority of the party’s sitting MPs – Raman Deka from Mangaldoi and Bijoy Chakravarty from Guwahati – have been fielded again.
The party has officially retained the suspense over where Rajnath Singh, Narendra Modi, L. K. Advani, Sushma Swaraj and Murli Manohar Joshi will contest from. Advani and Swaraj are comfortable in Gandhinagar and Vidisha respectively from where they had won in 2009. But the BJP President Rajnath Singh has indicated his preference for Lucknow.
Rajnath Singh is the sitting MP from Ghaziabad. But he is believed to be keen on contesting from Lucknow partly to claim the legacy of the BJP’s tallest leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, who once held this seat and partly because Ghaziabad is not considered a very safe seat for the BJP after the emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party.
Narendra Modi was believed to have been keen on Varanasi, from where the party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi is the sitting MP. But Joshi is believed to have refused to vacate this seat for Modi, who will have to hunt for another seat if he wants to contest from the battleground State of UP.