1 for Bansuri, 3 for Modi, 5 for Shivraj: BJP’s first list for Lok Sabha 2024 in 25 numbers

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released the first list of 195 Lok Sabha candidates ahead of general elections.

Some names were dropped, while others were added with one making a debut and still others running from the same constituencies as before.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chaired several meetings with his ministers in the past week to chart out a roadmap for the next five years. Amid this, the saffron party’s announcement of the list is the first major announcement as the party gears up for campaigning ahead of the elections.

Here’s a look at the first list in numbers:

195: The number of candidates in BJP’s first list for the Lok Sabha polls.

One: Bansuri Swaraj, the daughter of the late BJP stalwart Sushma Swaraj, will make her poll debut from the New Delhi seat.

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Two former chief ministers – Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Biplab Kumar Deb – also figure in the list.

Three: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Varanasi for a third time. Modi had contested from Varanasi for the first time in 2014 as he led the BJP to its maiden majority in Lok Sabha.

Four sitting MPs including Union minister Meenakshi Lekhi, former Union minister Harsh Vardhan and Ramesh Bidhuri have been dropped.

Five: Shivraj Singh Chouhan returns to his former parliamentary constituency Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, which he represented for five terms before taking over as the state’s chief minister in 2005.

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Seven ministers, who were members of Rajya Sabha and were expected to fight the Lok Sabha elections, have been fielded in the polls. Jyotiraditya Scindia will contest from Guna (Madhya Pradesh), Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh (Assam), Bhupender Yadav from Alwar (Rajasthan), Rajeev Chandrashekhar from Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), V Muraleedharan Parshottam Rupala from Rajkot (Gujarat) and Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar (Gujarat).

20 per cent of BJP’s MPs have been dropped.

34 Union ministers, including heavyweights like Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh, are part of the list.

The list includes 28 women, 47 persons below 50 years of age, 27 from Scheduled Castes, 18 from Scheduled Tribes and 57 from Other Backward Classes.

155 seats out of the 195 for which candidates have been named were won by the BJP in 2019.

The first list has 51 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 24 from Madhya Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 15 each from Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 from Kerala, nine from Telangana, 11 each from Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, five from Delhi, three from Uttarakhand, two each from Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, and one each from Goa, Tripura, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Daman and Diu.