- Monday, February 24, 2025
The Hindu nationalist party is eyeing its third successive term in power in this year’s general elections.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has unveiled two lists of candidates contesting this year’s general elections with 267 names and already, it has dropped almost 21 per cent of its sitting parliamentarians from their respective constituencies. For observers, it is a well-calculated move to beat anti-incumbency by a party which is eyeing its third successive stint in power.
The decisions have also been taken based on the feedback received from the grassroots by the top brass of the BJP, a party which runs with the help of an well-oiled machinery.
The BJP leadership has agreed on the candidates (195 in the first, 72 in the second) it has picked so far to contest in the next general elections with an eye to win 370 seats on its own. In 2019, the BJP won 303 seats on its own, much more than the required figure of 272 to form the government. Its National Democratic Alliance ended up with a tally of 351. In 2014, the BJP won 282 seats and the NDA won 336.
Read: Even after 10 years in office, PM Modi has no anti-incumbency challenge
In the first list which was released on March 2, 33 MPs, including the hardline ones in Pragya Thakur, Ramesh Bidhuri and Parvesh Sharma, were denied a ticket to contest the 2024 election. In the second list which was released on Wednesday (13) containing 72 names, 30 sitting MPs were not re-issued a ticket.
Of the 67 parliamentarians who have not been given tickets, two had decided not to contest and one of them is former India cricketer Gautam Gambhir, who had represented the East Delhi constituency since 2019.
Read: How Modi’s BJP runs a corporate-like show in preparing for general elections
In Delhi, the BJP in fact has replaced six of its sitting MPs, including junior foreign minister Meenakshi Lekhi, and retained one in Manoj Tiwari. In the southern state of Karnataka, the BJP has replaced 11 of its 20 MPs whose names were mentioned in the second list. The BJP won all seven seats in Delhi and 25 of 28 seats in Karnataka in 2019.
In Gujarat, another state dominated by the BJP (it won all 26 seats in the state in 2019), also, the BJP did not issue tickets to four of the seven sitting MPs that it mentioned in the second list. Those omitted include Darshana Jardosh, India’s junior railway minister.
