Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) is likely to field its known faces in the state along with some new comers in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. Current state party president and Secunderabad MP Kishan Reddy, Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay, and Nizamabad MP D Arvind are all likely to be retained for the same seats.
The probable candidates for other seats include ex-MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy for Chevalla, Boora Narasimha Goud for Bhongir, BB Patil (who quit BRS on March 1) for Zaheerabad, and Madhavi Lata for the Hyderabad constituency. However, the names are not yet finalised, as the screening is still ongoing by the BJP’s central leadership in Delhi.
Other names including Adilabad are expected to come in the next few days. After a late-night meeting at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence held on February 29, the BJP reportedly finalized at least 100 names from various Lok Sabha constituencies across the country.
The first list of candidates is likely to be released in a few days. Meanwhile, it is learned that the BJP plans to name at least 50 percent of its candidates by March 10.
The states that are being focused on include Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam Kerala, and others. The BJP top brass focused on the above states during its late-night marathon meeting.
The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP’s National President JP Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Organisation General Secretary BL Santosh, Chief Ministers, State Presidents, n-charges, co-incharges, and election in-charges of various states.
Telangana is important as it is the only southern state after Karnataka where the BJP has potential to make inroads. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won four out of 17 seats in Telangana in spite of doing miserably in the 2018 state election where it won just one seat. Analysts this year expect the contest to be between the BJP and ruling Congress in Telangana, and have mostly written-off the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Assam, Uttarakhand, and Goa were also present.
