BJP to hold CEC meet again today evening, first list expected

New Delhi: The BJP's central election committee (CEC), which is scheduled to meet on Wednesday evening as part of its deliberations to finalise candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, is expected to release the first set of nominees after the meeting, party sources said.

This will be the third meeting of the CEC, BJP's highest decision-making body, on the selection of candidates.

On Tuesday evening, it had held a seven-hour-long discussion to deliberate upon the names of party's candidates in various states.

The meeting, besides Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was attended by top brass of the BJP, including party chief Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley.

The sources said the party is expected to release its first list of candidates Wednesday evening.

The CEC has already held wide-ranging discussions on the selection of its candidates for Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chattisgarh and all eight north-eastern states.

Though the Congress has announced candidates for 146 Lok Sabha constituencies so far, the BJP is yet to officially make any announcement on its nominees.

Sources in the party suggested that most of the ministers in the Union Cabinet, who are sitting Lok Sabha MPs, are likely to be fielded from same seats.

On Tuesday, the party had announced that it will drop its all 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in the recent assembly elections.