The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have finalised 100 Lok Sabha candidates for the upcoming general elections 2024 after an overnight meeting of party's Central Election Committee (CEC) that was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
The meeting at BJP headquarters in Delhi, which was attended by senior leaders, began at 10:30 pm on Thursday and lasted for over four hours.
BJP president JP Nadda, Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh were among those who attended the meeting amid speculation that the party is looking to name its candidates for a sizeable number of the 543 Lok Sabha seats before the Election Commission (EC) announces the poll schedule.
The elections are expected to be held in April-May
Who All May Get Lok Sabha Ticket
Leaders from several states, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Gujarat's Bhupendra Patel, Madhya Pradesh CM Mohan Yadav, Chhattisgarh's Vishnu Deo Sai, Uttarakhand's Pushkar Singh Dhami and Goa's Pramod Sawant, were among those who arrived for the meeting.
Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and Rajasthan Deputy Chief Minister Diya Kumari also came for the meeting.
Many of the seats in the initial lists of candidates may include those where BJP unsuccessfully contested in 2019, a news agency PTI report cited sources as saying.
Many Union ministers, including Bhupender Yadav, Dharmendra Pradhan and Mansukh Mandaviya, are likely to be fielded in the general elections, after the party chose not to give them another Rajya Sabha term during the recent biennial polls to the Upper House of Parliament, the report said.
