March-1, The BJP may announce the first list of 100 Lok Sabha candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections later today. It is expected to announce an initial list of more than 100 candidates, including heavyweights. A marathon night of meetings in Delhi was followed by a Prime Minister-led meeting at Delhi’s official residence that started at 11pm on Thursday and ended about 4 a.m. on Friday.
The meetings from Thursday night to Friday morning focused on candidates from the Hindi heartland of UP, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, and PM Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The focus was also on the southern state of Kerala, where the Bharatiya Janata Party has been increasing vote share in each election, and Telangana, where it is expected to do much better this time.
Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu were also discussed at the meeting. In Andhra, discussions were held between the ruling YSR Congress Party and the Telugu Desam Party-Jana Sena alliance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will defend the Varanasi seat in Uttar Pradesh state, the bastion of the BJP. He won overwhelming victories here in 2014 and 2019, winning his first election by 3,70,000 votes and his second by about 4,80,000 votes.
Meanwhile, Amit Shah will be contesting again from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The BJP has held the seat since 1989 and has sent veteran leaders such as LK Advani and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee into Parliament. Amit Shah had won this seat in 2019 and recorded a comfortable victory, defeating Congress MP Chaturain Chavda by a margin of over 5,50,000 votes.
Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia can compete from Lucknow and Guna Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh, respectively.
In the meeting, it was also discussed to give six seats from the politically important state of Uttar Pradesh, to allies Apna Dal and Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal.