Uttarakhand Election: BJP Releases List Of 9 Candidates, Fields Ritu Bhushan Khanduri From Kotdwar

Uttarakhand Election 2022: Ritu Bhushan Khanduri's name was not in the first list of 59 candidates, leading to speculation that the ruling may not give her a ticket.

Photo: Twitter/@RituKhanduriBJP

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday released a list of 9 candidates for the Uttarakhand Assembly election. The party has fielded former chief minister BC Khanduri's daughter Ritu Bhushan Khanduri from the Kotdwar assembly seat.

Notably, the seat was won in 2017 by Harak Singh Rawat, who is now in Congress.

Ritu Bhushan Khanduri's name was not in the first list of 59 candidates, leading to speculation that the ruling may not give her a ticket as the party named another leader from Yamkeshwar, the seat she had won in the last election.

(Photo: ANI)

With the second list, the party has named candidates for 68 of the total 70 seats.

The two constituencies for which the BJP is yet to name candidates include Doiwala, whose incumbent MLA and former chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had expressed his unwillingness to fight these polls.

Meanwhile, the BJP is likely to release its manifesto for the upcoming Uttarakhand assembly election on February 2, party sources told news agency ANI.

"BJP's manifesto for the Uttarakhand polls is likely to be released on February 2 in the presence of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari," ANI quoted a source as saying.

According to another ANI report, the BJP Central Election Committee (ECI) has authorised party president JP Nadda to decide the rest of the names of candidates for the BJP who will be contesting the upcoming elections of Uttarakhand, Goa, and Punjab.

The BJP is likely to announce all its candidates by the end of the month.