BJP announces bypoll candidates - Ghanshyam Lodhi from Rampur, Tripura CM Saha from Town Bordowali

The BJP on Saturday announced its candidates for the June 23 bypolls for assembly and parliamentary seats and fielded Ghanshyam Lodhi from Rampur Lok Sabha constituency in Uttar Pradesh, from where Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi's candidature was highly speculated after he missed out on a Rajya Sabha nomination.

The BJP currently does not have any Muslim member in Lok Sabha. The tenures of its all three Muslim Rajya Sabha members -- Naqvi, M J Akbar and Syed Zafar Islam -- are ending within a month or so.

Naqvi had contested from Rampur a few times and won once. Sources in the party suggested that Naqvi himself was not very keen on contesting from the seat this time.


Lodhi, a Samajwadi Party MLC who had joined the BJP ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, will contest from Rampur.

The BJP has once again fielded Bhojpuri star Dinesh Lal Yadav 'Nirahua' from the Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat.

'Nirahua' had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 parliamentary election from Azamgarh against Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

The Azamgarh and Rampur constituencies were vacated by Samajwadi Party leaders Akhilesh Yadav and Mohd Azam Khan respectively after winning the assembly polls.

For the Rajinder Nagar assembly seat in Delhi, the BJP has fielded Rajesh Bhatia. The seat became vacant following senior AAP leader Raghav Chadha's election to Rajya Sabha from Punjab.

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha is the BJP's candidate from the Town Bordowali assembly seat. Saha, a Rajya Sabha member, was recently appointed the state's chief minister, replacing Biplab Deb.

In Tripura, the party has fielded Ashok Sinha from Agartala, Swapna Das Paul from Surma (SC) and Malina Debnath from Jubarajnagar.

The party has nominated Gundlapalli Bharath Kumar Yadav from the Atmarkur assembly seat in Andhra Pradesh and Gangorti Kujur from Mandar (ST) in Jharkhand.

The by-election to three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats across six states will be held on June 23, according to the Election Commission.

The third parliamentary seat is Sangrur in Punjab which was vacated by Bhagwant Mann, who became the chief minister of the state after the Aam Aadmi Party won the recently held assembly polls there.

Votes will be counted on June 26 and the notification for the bypolls will be issued on May 30, the EC had said in a statement.