4 BJP MP missing from candidate list
When the Bharatiya Janata Party unveiled its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Saturday, it replaced up to 33 incumbent MPs with fresh faces. Some prominent figures, including Parvesh Verma, son of former Delhi CM Sahib Singh Verma, former Union minister and Hazaribagh MP Jayant Sinha, Bhopal MP Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, and South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, who allegedly made communal remarks in Parliament, were absent from the party’s first list of candidates, which could be interpreted as a message for contentious leaders from the BJP high command.
BJP’s first Lok Sabha election candidate list: 4 big names missing
Sadhvi Pragya Thakur
Alok Sharma, the BJP’s nominee for the Madhya Pradesh Bhopal seat, will take Sadhvi Pragya Thakur’s place as the sitting member. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Thakur made a name for himself as one of the “giant killers,” defeating Congress mainstay Digvijaya Singh by a commanding 3,64,822 vote margin. Thakur has faced controversy throughout her tenure, despite her election victory. She provoked controversy before the 2019 elections by drawing comparisons between the mythological characters Ravan and Kans and Hemant Karkare, the former head of the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) and recipient of the Ashok Chakra. Her comments regarding Karkare’s death during the Mumbai terror attacks stoked controversy even more, prompting the Election Commission of India (ECI) to issue a show-cause notice and the BJP to pull away from her.
Ramesh Bidhuri
The BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri recently caused a great deal of controversy when he made disparaging remarks about MP Danish Ali during a debate about the accomplishments of the Chandrayaan-3 mission. Videos of Bidhuri making divisive remarks about Danish Ali went viral on social media and received a lot of backlash. According to reports, Ramesh Bidhuri, the party MP, has received a show-cause notice from BJP president JP Nadda for using offensive language against Danish Ali in the Parliament. The offending comments were removed from the Parliamentary record, and Rajnath Singh, the minister of defence, quickly apologized for Bidhuri’s behaviour during the meeting.
Parvesh Verma
The BJP has dropped Parvesh Verma, its current MP, and fielded Kamaljeet Sehrawat from the West Delhi constituency of Delhi. Former South Delhi Municipal Corporation mayor Kamaljeet Sahrawat is a prominent figure in the party’s Delhi MCD campaign. According to reports from last year, Parvesh Verma’s remarks, which called for a “economic boycott” of a specific community, were sharply denounced by the BJP leadership. On October 9, of last year, Verma spoke at an event called “Virat Hindu Sabha,” which was arranged in East Delhi by the local chapter of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and other Hindu organizations. Verma made the case in a speech for a “complete boycott” of “these people,” without specifically mentioning any group of people.
Jayant Sinha
Manish Jaiswal, a BJP MLA from Hazaribag, takes Jayant Sinha’s place as the party’s sitting MP in the Hazaribag Lok Sabha seat. Congressman Dr. Ramchandra Prasad lost to Jaiswal in the 2019 election for the Hazaribag assembly seat. Son of former union minister Yashwant Sinha, Sinha had earlier in the day said he had asked to be relieved of his direct electoral duties by party president JP Nadda. In 2019, Jayant Sinha claimed that he and a few other BJP leaders contributed money to cover the legal bills of those charged with lynching a meat vendor in Ramgarh, Jharkhand, in 2017. His admission occurred a year after he incited controversy by praising and taking pictures with the six accused following their release on bond and transportation to the minister’s home in Hazaribagh
