New Delhi: The BJP on Saturday released its eighth list of 11 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. In this list, the saffron party named 3 candidates from Odisha, six from Punjab and two from West Bengal.
The party dropped actor Sunny Deol and fielded Dinesh Singh 'Babbu' from Gurdaspur, former diplomat Taranjit Singh Sandhu got ticket from Amritsar, Shushil Kumar Rinku was fielded from Jalandhar, Hans Raj Hans from Faridkot and suspended Congress MP and wife of former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Preneet Kaur was fielded from Patiala.
Hans Raj Hans, the incumbent BJP legislator from Delhi's North-West seat, has been shifted to Punjab. Preneet Kaur, a four-time MP and former Union Minister, joined BJP in the presence of senior leaders earlier this month.
Six-time MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, who recently left the Biju Janata Dal and joined BJP has been fielded from Cuttack. The BJP also gave ticket to Rabindra Narayan Behra from Jajpur and Sukanta Kumar Panigrahi from Kandhamal in Odisha.
From West Bengal, the saffron party named Pranat Tudu from Jhargram and Debashish Dhar from Birbhum. Dhar recently resigned from the Indian Police Services.
Earlier this week, the BJP released two more lists. In its seventh list on Wednesday, the party named Navneet Rana from Maharashtra’s Amravati and Govind Kajrol from Karnataka’s Chitradurga. On Tuesday in its sixth list, BJP dropped sitting MPs from the seats in Manipur and Rajasthan they won in the previous elections.
Rana secured victory as an independent candidate in 2019 with the backing of Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), defeating Anandrao Adsul of Shiv Sena.
With Saturday’s announcement, the saffron party has so far named 418 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election.