JOIN USBJP announces candidates for Assembly, Parliamentary bypolls
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced Tripura chief minister Dr Manik Saha as its candidate from the Town Bardowali Assembly seat in Tripura, as well as Bhojpuri singer Nirahua from the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat.
The party announced candidates to bypolls in two Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, as well as to seven Assembly seats across four states.
Saha, a Rajya Sabha MP who replaced Biplab Deb as the chief minister, will face a tough task in a state where the BJP is already battling factionalism and infighting.
In UP, the party has also fielded from the Rampur seat. Both the Lok Sabha seats were vacated by Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Singh and Azam Khan after they won the Assembly polls.
While Nirahua, which is the popular state name of Dinesh Lal Yadav, will contest from Akhilesh Yadav’s seat, there is speculation that Azam Khan might field his daughter-in-law Sidra or wife Tazeen Fatima from bastion. BSP supremo Mayawati has already announced that she will not field any candidate in Rampur.
In Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar, a seat vacated by Raghav Chadha who was elected to Rajya Sabha from Punjab, the BJP has fielded Rajesh Bhatia. Apart from that, the party has fielded Gundlapalli Bharath Kumar Yadav from the Atmarkur Assembly seat in Andhra Pradesh and Gangorti Kujur from Mandar (ST) in Jharkhand.
Apart from the two Lok Sabha seats and seven Assemblya seats where the BJP has announced candidates, polls will take place on a third Lok Sabha seat as well on June 23. The third seat is Sangrur in Punjab, which was held by Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann. The last day of nominations for Lok Sabha seats is June 6.