Five new faces among 7 LS candidates declared by BJP in Gujarat; MoS Railway dropped

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday announced names of seven more candidates in Gujarat, which has 26 Lok Sabha seats, dropping five sitting MPs, including junior Railway minister Darshana Jardosh, and replacing them with new faces.

On March 2, the BJP, in its first list of 195 candidates, had announced nominees for 15 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, where the saffron outfit had swept the polls in 2019.

After the release of second list of 72 candidates in New Delhi, contestants for only four seats in the BJP-ruled state remain to be declared by the saffron party.


Instead of Jardosh, a three-time Member of Parliament, the party has chosen Mukesh Dalal for the Surat Lok Sabha constituency. Dalal (63) is a former standing committee chairman of the BJP-ruled Surat Municipal Corporation and currently serves as general secretary of the party's Surat city unit.

Four other sitting MPs who have been denied tickets are -- Dipsinh Rathod from Sabarkantha, KC Patel from Valsad, Bhartiben Shiyal from Bhavnagar and Geetaben Rathwa from Chhota Udepur.

The two sitting MPs who were re-nominated by the party are Ranjanben Bhatt from Vadodara and Hasmukh Patel from Ahmedabad-East. For the Sabarkantha seat, which includes parts of adjoining Arvalli district, the BJP has fielded 56-year-old Bhikhaji Thakor, a former VHP worker who is currently serving as the party's Arvalli district unit general secretary.

In Bhavnagar, the party has fielded former city mayor Nimuben Bambhaniya. She is currently serving as in-charge of the party's Junagadh city affairs.

BJP member Jashubhai Rathwa, who lost to the Congress candidate in the 2017 Assembly elections, he has been fielded from the ST-reserved Chhota Udepur Lok Sabha seat in place of sitting MP Geetaben Rathwa.

For another tribal-reserved seat Valsad, the BJP has shown faith in 38-year-old Dhaval Patel, a BTech engineer currently serving as national social media in-charge of the party's ST Morcha. Of the seven candidates named in the second BJP list, five -- Dalal, Thakor, Bambhaniya, Jashubhai Rathwa and Dhaval Patel -- will be contesting Lok Sabha polls for the first time.

The Lok Sabha polls are likely to be held in April-May.