New Delhi. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released its first list of 160 candidates for the two-phase elections to the 182-member Gujarat Assembly. Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel has been made a candidate from his constituency Ghatlodhiya and tickets of many sitting MLAs have been cut.
The names of Hardik Patel, who was the face of the Patidar movement in the last assembly elections, and Rivaba Jadeja, wife of cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, are also included in the list. Hardik Patel later left the Congress and joined the BJP. Hardik Patel will contest from Viramgam and Rivaba Jadeja from Jamnagar North.
While releasing the list, Union Minister Bhupendra Yadav said that BJP has not given tickets to 38 sitting MLAs. He claimed that in most of the seats other candidates have been fielded only with the consent of the sitting MLAs. The party has announced the names of 84 candidates for the 89 seats in the first phase on December 1 and 76 out of 93 seats for the second phase on December 5.
BJP’s Gujarat unit president CR Patil along with Union ministers Bhupendra Yadav and Mansukh Mandaviya released the list of candidates at a press conference here. Yadav released the names of the candidates selected at the party’s Central Election Committee meeting on Wednesday. Yadav said the list includes 69 sitting MLAs. This shows that many sitting MLAs have not been given tickets this time. The list includes 14 women, 13 from scheduled castes and 24 from scheduled tribes.
Yadav said that many senior leaders of the state, including former Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and former Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, have decided not to contest the elections and had written a letter to the party leadership in this regard. Patil exuded confidence that the BJP would break its earlier record of number of seats and vote percentage in these elections.
Apart from the party’s national president JP Nadda, other members of the central election committee including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh were present in the meeting to decide the names of the candidates. The BJP is expected to maintain its winning streak in the state assembly elections from 1995. (Language)
