BJP releases 3rd list of candidates, focus on TN with Annamalai, Soundararajan leading charge
New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday declared the third list of candidates for the impending Lok Sabha elections, consisting of nine names from Tamil Nadu.
The list starts with former Telangana Governor and Puducherry Lieutenant-Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan’s name from Chennai South Lok Sabha constituency.
Whereas, Tamil Nadu BJP state president K Annamalai will contest the elections from Coimbatore, Minister of State in Modi’s cabinet L Murugan will contest from Nilgiris.
This apart, Vinoj P Selvam will contest from Chennai Central, A C Shanmugam has been named from Vellore, C Narasimhan from Krishnagiri, TR Paarivendhar from Perambalur, Nainar Nagendran from Tirunelveli and Pon Radhakrishnan from Kanyakumari.
The BJP is optimistic about its prospects in the southern state as K Annamalai, a former engineer turned IPS officer, assumes the role of the youngest Tamil Nadu state president. Having served in the Karnataka cadre, Annamalai resigned from the IPS in 2019 and joined the BJP in 2020.
His appointment as the state president, just a year later, marks him as the youngest to hold this position within the party at the age of 37.
Whereas, 62-year-old Tamilisai Soundararajan contested the Lok Sabha
election in 2019 from the Thoothukudi seat, which the ruling DMK’s Kanimozhi currently holds.
She was the former BJP state president in Tamil Nadu.
Furthermore, several allies of the BJP will contest alongside the party under its ‘Lotus’ symbol in four constituencies within the state.
The Saffron party unveiled its initial list of 195 candidates on March 2, confirming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek re-election from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi for the third consecutive term.
Subsequently, the party released a second list on March 13, comprising 75 candidates, including 11 Union Ministers such as Nitin Gadkari, Anurag Singh Thakur, and Pralhad Joshi.
The first list included candidates for 51 seats from Uttar Pradesh, 20 from West Bengal, 24 from Madhya Pradesh, 15 each from Gujarat and Rajasthan, 12 from Kerala, 9 from Telangana, 11 from Assam, 11 each from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, 5 from Delhi, 2 from Jammu and Kashmir, 3 from Uttarakhand, 2 from Arunachal Pradesh, and 1 each from Goa, Tripura, Andaman and Nicobar, as well as Daman and Diu.
