The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will likely release its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections 2024 this afternoon, according to BJP sources. The list is expected to be made public through a press conference on Friday, where details of the candidates will be revealed.
Sources close to the party told ABP Live, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's name is anticipated to be on the initial list. Additionally, the name of Home Minister Amit Shah is also speculated to feature on the list.
Candidates for several key seats in Uttar Pradesh including Varanasi, Ayodhya, Prayagraj, Azamgrah, and Gorakhpur are learnt to be made public in the first list.
The fate of Satyadev Pachauri, sitting MP from Kanpur, is said to be in doubt considering his age and local resentment.
In Prayagraj, the party high command is said to be upset with MP Rita Bhauguna Joshi due to her proximity with the Samajwadi Party which might cast aspersion on her as well to get a ticket, the sources said.
Gonda MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh had been caught in the wrestlers' protest row while eyes are set on Pilibhit seat as well from where Varun Gandhi is currently elected to Lok Sabha.
Of late, Varun has been openly critcising the policies of Modi government.
The first list might also reveal the fate of Ritesh Pande, the Bhaujan Samaj Party MP, who crossed over to BJP.
Doubts loom over Badaun seat as well, currently held by BJP MP Sanghamitra Maurya, daughter of Swami Prasad Maurya. The latter had left the saffron party ahead of 2021 UP Assembly polls and later formed his own party.
Whether Sanghamitra joins her father or gets a BJP ticket might be revealed by the first list.
The development comes just hours after the saffron party concluded its meeting of the Central Election Committee (CEC) in the early hours of Friday. The meeting, which began at around 10:30 pm on Thursday and went on for around four hours, was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attended by senior party leaders including BJP national president JP Nadda, Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh.
The meeting was also attended by chief minister of BJP-ruled states including Uttar Pradesh's Yogi Adityanath, Madhya Pradesh's Mohan Yadav, Chhattisgarh's Vishnu Deo Sai, Uttarakhand's Pushkar Singh Dhami, and Goa's Pramod Sawant.
Usually, the poll panel meeting is attended by leaders those states which undergoe deliberation for shortlisting of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.
The list is expected to include those seats in the first list that the party has targeted for improving its prospects after unsuccessfully contesting those in 2019, reported PTI quoting party sources as saying.
Several Union ministers including Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mansukh Mandaviya, are likely to be fielded in the Lok Sabha elections after they were not given a ticket for the recently-concluded Rajya Sabha polls.