The party has fielded many high-profile candidates from Kerala in the first list including two Union ministers.
BJP Candidate List: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday announced the names of candidates for 195 seats for the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections 2024. This includes seats from Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Candidates for Kerala have also been announced in the first list of BJP.
The BJP currently does not have a single MP in Kerala. The party has fielded many high-profile candidates from Kerala in the first list including two Union ministers – Rajeev Chandrashekhar and V Muraleedharan. Both are currently Rajya Sabha MPs of the party.
Union Minister of State Rajiv Chandrashekhar has been fielded from Thiruvananthapuram. Congress leader Shashi Tharoor is the current MP from this seat. Besides this, leading film actor Suresh Gopi has been fielded from the Thrissur seat, while Anil Antony, son of former defense minister AK Antony, has been fielded from Pathanamthitta. MT Ramesh is the BJP candidate from Kozhikode.
There are a total of 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerala. Out of these, BJP has announced the names of 12 candidates. In the first list, BJP has fielded C Krishnakumar from Pakkkad, Suresh Gopi from Thrissur, Shobha Surendran from Alappuzha, Anil Antony from Pathanamthitta, Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram, MT Ramesh from Kozhikode.
Apart from this, tickets have been given to Dr Abdul Salam from Malappuram, Nivedita from Ponnani, V Muraleedharan from Attingal, Prafulla Krishna from Vadakara, ML Ashwini from Kasaragod, and C Raghunath from Kannur.
In the last two Lok Sabha elections of 2014 and 2019, the BJP has performed brilliantly in most of the northern states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh.
In such a situation, it is difficult to increase the number of seats in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from these states, due to which BJP is now eyeing the southern states.
BJP has often been accused of not fielding Muslim candidates in elections. However, this time BJP has given a ticket to a Muslim candidate, Dr. Abdul Salam from Malappuram seat. Salam joined the BJP in 2019 and then two years later contested elections from Momon.
BJP currently does not have a single MP in Kerala. In the last 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Congress had got the maximum number of 15 seats from Kerala. Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi himself is also an MP from Wayanad seat in Kerala.
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