BJP fields Sunny Deol from Gurdaspur, renominates Kirron Kher from Chandigarh

The BJP on Tuesday released a list of three candidates for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections fielding actor Sunny Deol from Gurdaspur in Punjab, hours after joining the party. Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat in Punjab was represented by the late Vinod Khanna from BJP.

Sunny Deol joined the BJP on Tuesday showering praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photo: Twitter

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Tuesday released a list of three candidates for the ongoing Lok Sabha elections fielding actor Sunny Deol from Gurdaspur parliamentary constituency in Punjab, hours after joining the party. Gurdaspur Lok Sabha seat was represented by the late Vinod Khanna from BJP. The saffron party also renominated its sitting MP Kirron Kher from Chandigarh. Kher, 63, had trounced four-time MP from Chandigarh, Pawan Kumar Bansal by a margin of nearly 70,000 votes in the 2014 general election, which was her first electoral outing. Apart from Deol and Kher, the party gave its ticket to Som Prakash from Hoshiarpur (reserved) seat.

Lok Sabha elections: BJP fields Sunny Deol from Gurdaspur, Kirron Kher from Chandigarh. pic.twitter.com/UKmOWWPkDG

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Sunny Deol joined the BJP on Tuesday showering praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The third from the family to join politics and the BJP, after Dharmendra and his wife Hema Malini, Deol is best known his roles in action and patriotic films including "Gadar: Ek Prem Katha" and "Border". Hema Malini, the BJP candidate from Mathura, is Deol's stepmother The 62-year-old actor was earlier in the day welcomed into the party by Union Ministers Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman, days after he met BJP President Amit Shah. Later in a tweet, he thanked the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders for the warm welcome. After Vinod Khanna's death in 2017, Congress won the Gurdaspur by-election in 2017. "The way my father joined politics and this family during the time of Atalji, today I am here to join (Narendra) Modiji," Deol told the media after joining the BJP. "He (Modi) has done so much for the country. I want that he should remain the Prime Minister for the next five years because we want to develop (as a country). Our youth needs people like Modi. I will do whatever I can with all my heart for this family (BJP)," the actor said.