AHMEDABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday released its first list of candidates who will be contesting the Gujarat elections.
The 70-candidate list includes incumbent Chief Minister Vijay Rupani who will be contesting from Rajkot West. Deputy Chief Minister Nitinbhai Patel will be contesting from Mehsana and Gujarat BJP President Jitubhai Vaghani from Bhavnagar West.
The party has also given tickets to six of the 14 defecting Congress MLAs and has repeated most of the sitting MLAs in their constituencies in this first list
Surprisingly and contrary to speculation, both the Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) members, Varun Patel and Reshma Patel, have not been included in the first list of candidates.
Two BJP MLAs, Vadhwan constituency`s Varshaben Doshi, and BJP MLA from Dhari constituency, Nalin Kotadia, have been dropped. Instead, Dhanjibhai Patel is to contest from Vadhwan and Dileep Sanghani will be contesting from Dhari.
The decision to finalise the candidates was taken in a meeting attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and other members of the BJP Central Election Committee.
Gujarat goes to polls in December, where the first phase for 89 seats will be held on the 9th and for the remaining 93 seats it will be held on the 14th. The results will be announced along with that of Himachal Pradesh on December 18.
Bureau Report
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