BJP announces first list of candidates for LS polls

New Delhi, June 26: BJP on Thursday announced its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, fielding its prime ministerial candidate L K Advani from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. "The countdown to the end of the UPA rule has begun from today. Our prime ministerial candidate L K Advani would be contesting from the Gandhinagar parliamentary seat," party general secretary Anant Kumar said while announcing the list at the party headquarters here. The list also included the names of five other candidates -- Navjot Singh Sidhu (Amritsar), Vinod Khanna (Gurdaspur), Shripad Y Naik (Panaji), Anurag Thakur (Hamirpur) and T P S Rawat (Pauri). The decision was taken at the meeting of Central Election Committee (CEC) here today, he added. The CEC chaired by party president Rajnath Singh was followed by a meeting of the central election management committee and the party`s core group. "The present political scenario and the ensuing instability in the Centre was discussed threadbare. The core group also delved upon the situation arising if the Manmohan Singh government was reduced to a minority," sources said. Today`s meetings were attended by party`s senior leaders L K Advani, Venkiah Naidu, Murli Manohar Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Anant Kumar and Sushma Swaraj among others. Party representatives from Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Goa unit were also present in the meetings. The party plans to announce all seats by the end of August and the state units have been asked to send their inputs on candidate selection by then, party leader Venkiah Naidu told reporters after the meeting. "After the Gujarat and Karnataka successes, the party is now following the experiment at the Centre. We would have an early lead in announcement of leader which is L K Advani, candidates, manifesto, preparation and the campaign," Naidu told reporters. Advani is slated to formally launch the Lok Sabha campaign for the party from Kanpur tomorrow. Today is also the 33rd anniversary of the imposition of emergency and the leaders in today`s meeting were reminded of the importance of announcing the candidates today, Naidu added. The party plans to send one central leader of the Central Election Management Committee to each state to finalise the preparation for the Lok Sabha elections. The lists for the states going to assembly polls will be announced only later. "A 30-point recommendation has been sent to each state unit to prepare for the polls. They have been asked to highlight the local issues to supplement the party manifesto," Naidu said.