BJP first list out, Modi to contest from Varanasi, Amit Shah from Gandhinagar

New Delhi: The BJP Thursday fielded Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi constituency and its president Amit Shah from Gandhinagar in place of L K Advani as its announced its first list of 184 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.

Senior party leader J P Nadda told a press conference that the party also decided to field Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and another Union minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur. Both leaders had won from these seats in the last general election. Union Minister Smriti Irani has been renominated from Amethi and will take on Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Union minister Kiren Rijiju to fight from Arunachal East.

The BJP has also renominated Union ministers V K Singh and Mahesh Shamra from Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), respectively. The BJP announced its candidates from many states, including Uttar Prdesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. The BJP has finalised names of all 17 party candidates from Bihar and sent the list to the state unit which will announce it jointly with allies, Nadda said. Lok Sabha elections will begin on April 11 and continue for over a month till May 19 across seven phases, followed by counting of votes on May 23. The polling will be held on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19 for 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country in which nearly 90 crore voters would be eligible to vote.