Modi: 50 per cent new faces for the first list in Gujarat assembly elections

NEW DELHI: BJP will field new faces in around 50 per cent seats in the first phase of the Gujarat assembly elections scheduled for December 13. Aimed at bucking anti-incumbency, BJP's central election committee, which met in New Delhi on Thursday evening, denied tickets to 13 of 59 MLAs.

The remaining 30 seats have new candidates.

BJP announced that chief minister Narendra Modi will be seeking re-election from Maninagar, which will be held in the second phase. Modi won this seat in 2007, with a margin of 75,000 votes, against Congress' Dinsha Patel.

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In the first list, the party has given tickets to 14 leaders from the Scheduled Tribe community and 6 from the Scheduled Caste sections. It will also field 10 women candidates.

The selection of the candidates, which carried the Modi stamp, was a short affair as there were not many multiple claimants for the constituencies. The state committee had worked out the list in consultation with the chief minister.

Meanwhile, Congress withdrew its second list for the Gujarat assembly polls, after a virtual revolt over ticket distribution.

Congress leaders and supporters protested at the Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee premises in Ahmedabad, claiming that the party leadership was unfair to them.

"The second list of 46 candidates for Gujarat assembly polls stands withdrawn," said a statement from the party, after protests and resignations in the state unit.

Several Congress MLAs from Gujarat were unhappy that they were left out of the first list of 52 candidates, party sources said. Gujarat Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia and Congress legislature party leader Shaktisinh Gohil figured in the first list of 52 candidates announced on Wednesday evening.

The AICC had announced two lists of 52 and 46 candidates separately after a meeting of the party's central election committee chaired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday evening.