Bharatiya Janata Party Releases Third List of Candidates

Guwahati: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released its third list of candidates last on Friday which consists of 36 names. These also include 23 nominees for Andhra Pradesh where polling will be held in the first phase on April 11.

The list which has been announced on Friday contained names of six candidates for Maharashtra and five for Odisha. The list also consists one name each for Assam and Meghalaya.

BJP national spokesperson, Sambit Patra will contest from Puri Parliamentary constituency in Odisha in the Lok Sabha election.

The party in its second list announced one candidate for Daman and Diu which will go to poll in the third phase of the election on April 23. The candidate to contest from the constituency is Lalubhai Patel. The decision of the candidate for Daman and Diu has been taken in the party's Central Election Commission's meeting presided by BJP President Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari, Arun Jaitley and other members of CEC.

The BJP announced the first list of 182 candidates on Thursday which includes the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and Smriti Irani.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Varanasi while party President Amit Shah will be fielded from Gandhinagar constituency which was earlier represented by the party veteran LK Advani.

In the first list, 16 candidates from Maharashtra, eight from Assam, two from Arunachal Pradesh, five each from Chhattisgarh and Jammu and Kashmir have been announced while 21 from Karnataka, 13 from Kerela, 10 from Odisha, 16 from Rajasthan, five from Tamil Nadu, 10 from Telangana, five from Uttarakhand, twenty-eight from West Bengal and two from Andhra Pradesh have been announced.

The National Democratic Alliance had formed the government with 336 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 elections after the BJP secured an absolute majority by winning 282 seats out of the total 545 seats.

The 2019 Lok Sabha polls will be held in seven phases from April 11 to May 19 in 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country while the counting of the votes will be on May 23.

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