BJP declares 99 candidates in second Bihar poll list

New Delhi, Sep 19: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released its second list of candidates for Bihar assembly polls with 99 names.

The list was announced by union minister J.P. Nadda after a meeting of the party's central election committee which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The list of candidates consists of doctors, engineers, lawyers and other professionals. Other than this we have tried to accommodate people from all sections of the society," he said at a press conference following the meeting.

"Seats of 14 current MLAs have been changed," he added.

Nadda also said that list consists of 60 percent youth.

With this, the BJP has announced 142 candidates of the 160 it will field in the five-phase poll to the 243-member Bihar assembly. The remaining 83 will be contested by its allies - the Lok Janshakti Party, Hindustani Awam Morcha and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party.

The meeting at the BJP's central office was also attended by party president Amit Shah, union ministers Arun Jaitley, Rajnath Singh, Ananth Kumar, and Dharamendra Pradhan, party's state affairs in-charge Bhupendra Yadav, Bihar BJP chief Mangal Pandey, former state deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi and former union minister Shahnawaz Hussain.

The BJP has fielded Buxar MP Ashwini Choubey's son Ajeet Sashwat from Bhagalpur whereas son of Rajya Sabha MP and former health minister C.P Thakur, Vivek Thakur was given ticket from Brahmapur in Buxar district.

BJP had released its first list of candidates for Bihar assembly polls with 43 names.

Bihar will have five-phase elections between October 12 to November 5, with counting of votes slated for November 8.

IANS