KOLKATA: BJP General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya on Tuesday said party veterans and former Presidents Murli Manohar Joshi and Lal Krishna Advani themselves refused to contest the Lok Sabha elections this time.

"Advani Ji and Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi refused to contest the Lok Sabha polls. Similarly, I also refused to contest. If someone is unwilling (to contest) will the party give them tickets?" IANS quoted Vijayvargiya as saying.

When asked whether the two party veterans wrote any letter to the leadership expressing their unwillingness to contest the coming elections, Vijayvargiya said the message was conveyed to their organisational minister.

Earlier, the BJP denied a ticket to Advani and replaced him with party President Amit Shah in the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat in Gujarat. Advani and Joshi have also been kept out of the list of 40 leaders who will be campaigning for the first two phases of the Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Vijayvargiya's remarks come hours after Joshi claimed in a letter that he was asked by the party to not contest the coming general election.

The statement said BJP general secretary (organisation) Ramlal, a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) appointee, had conveyed Joshi the party leadership's decision that he should not be contesting the elections.

ALSO READ: 'BJP asked me not to contest elections', Joshi writes to voters

"Dear voters of Kanpur, Shri Ramlal, General Secretary (Org), Bharatiya Janata Party conveyed to me today that I should not contest the ensuing parliamentary election from Kanpur and elsewhere," Joshi wrote in the statement.

Joshi had vacated Varanasi seat, which he had won in 2009, for Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.

While some veterans have come out to express their wish to not contest the poll- apparently on the prodding of the party's leadership- many others like Advani have refrained from doing so.

However, no senior leader, who has been denied the ticket, has criticised the decision or attacked the leadership.

The BJP has also not given tickets to likes of Shanta Kumar, B C Khanduri, Kariya Munda, Kalraj Mishra, Bijoya Chakravarty - all many term MPs and over 80 years of age - besides Advani (91).