Lok Sabha elections 2019: BJP announces list of nine more candidates

New Delhi, Mar 24: The BJP on Sunday released a list of its nine more candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha election. With this, the BJP has announced names of 306 candidates.

Today's list had names of six candidates for Chhattisgarh and one each for Meghalaya, Maharashtra and Telangana.

The party had earlier announced that none of its nine sitting Lok Sabha members from Chhattisgarh will be fielded in the polls, a move aimed at any perceived anti-incumbency they may have after the saffron party suffered a big defeat to the Congress in the assembly polls.

Putting to rest speculation on whether former Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh will be fielded from his home constituency Rajnandgaon or not, the BJP named Santosh Pandey its candidate from the seat. It has fielded Jyoti Nand Dubey from Korba, Arun Saw from Bilaspur, Vijay Baghel from Durg and Sunil Soni from Raipur in the state.

Earlier today, Congress released its ninth list of 10 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. With this, the Congress has announced the names of its 228 candidates for the election to the 543-member Lok Sabha so far.

The ninth list has some prominent names such as former union minister P Chidambaram's son Karti Chidambaram, who will contest from Shivganga in Tamil Nadu, BK Hariprasad, who will contest from South Bengaluru, and Tariq Anwar who will fight from Katihar in Bihar, among others.

The election to the 543-member Lok Sabha which will held in seven phases beginning on April 11 and ending on May 19. The counting will take place on May 23.

OneIndia News with PTI inputs