The Hindu : Bulandshahr for Kalyan, Katiyar shifted from Faizabad

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Mar 15, 2004

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Bulandshahr for Kalyan, Katiyar shifted from Faizabad

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, MARCH 14. The Bharatiya Janata Party's central election committee chaired by its president, Venkaiah Naidu, at its first sitting here today declared the names of 136 Lok Sabha candidates spread over 17 States and Union Territories. The list includes the names of 83 members of the dissolved Lok Sabha while seven former MPs have been dropped.

The very first list has cleared the names of three senior party leaders — the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, will contest from his old constituency Lucknow, the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, will fight to retain the Gandhinagar seat in Gujarat, and the Human Resource Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, will try his luck once again from his old bastion, Allahabad. It is almost certain now that the party general secretary, Pramod Mahajan, will not contest the polls as his name does not figure in the 21 names declared for Maharashtra.

The party today cleared the names of 54 candidates from Uttar Pradesh. The most significant name is that of the former U.P. Chief Minister who recently returned to the BJP, Kalyan Singh, who will be fielded from Bulandshahr, while the State president, Vinay Katiyar, has been shifted from Faizabad, which he represented in the 13th Lok Sabha, to Lakhimpur Kheri. Although officially the party stated that this had been done to help win Kheri while retaining Faizabad, it seems that it was feared Mr. Katiyar would be defeated in Faizabad as he made tall promises about Ayodhya but delivered nothing. Many of the `sadhus' in nearby Ayodhya's `akharas' have turned against Mr. Katiyar, party sources said.

As many as 27 members of the dissolved Lok Sabha figure on the list. The prominent names are Santosh Gangawar (Bareilly), Swamy Chinmayanand (Jaunpur), Maneka Gandhi (Pilibhit), Sheela Gautam (Aligarh), Ashok Pradhan (Khurja) and Adityanath Yogi (Gorakhpur). No decision has been taken on the Rampur seat which the party general secretary, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, would like to contest, while the Agriculture Minister, Rajnath Singh, and the senior leader, Kalraj Mishra, "will not contest,'' Mr. Mahajan said. They will concentrate on organising the elections.

In Maharashtra, the party has declared its candidates for 21 of the 26 seats it will contest. The Petroleum Minister, Ram Naik, has been fielded again from North Mumbai, Jayawantibehn Mehta will once again contest the South Mumbai seat and Kirit Somaiyya will once again fight for the Northeast Mumbai constituency. They are among the nine members of the dissolved Lok Sabha who are on the declared list.

The central election committee meeting which began its sitting at 11 a.m. at the Prime Minister's residence has finalised the names of its candidates for all six seats in Tamil Nadu and one in Pondicherry that were allotted to it by the AIADMK, while in Bihar, where seat sharing between the BJP and its allies is not yet complete, the party declared just four candidates, all four Ministers — C.P. Thakur for the Patna seat, Shahnawaz Hussain for Kishanganj, Raja Pratap Rudi will try his luck again from Chhapra, and Hukumdev Narain Yadav from Madhubani.

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