Actors Kangana Ranaut, Arun Govil, Industrialist Naveen Jindal Get Tickets As BJP Names 111 More Candidates for LS Polls

The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released its fifth list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections featuring some big names including Naveen Jindal from Haryana’s Kurukshetra, actress Kangana Ranaut from Himachal’s Mandi and Arun Govil from Meerut.

This will be the electoral debut of Kangana Ranaut, who calls herself a “fan” of Prime  Minister Narendra Modi and Arun Govil who played Ram in the popular TV serial Ramayan.

While Varun Gandhi has been dropped from BJP’s candidate list in Uttar Pradesh, his mother Maneka Gandhi has retained Sultanpur.

K Surendran has been pitted from Wayanad against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Other notable names from the 5th list are Nityanand Rai from Ujiarpur, Ravi Shankar Prasad from Patna Sahib, Jagadish Shettar from Belagaum, Dharmendra Pradhan from Sambalpur, Sambit Patra from Puri, Jitin Prasada from Pilibhit, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay from Tamluk and Dilip Ghosh from Bardhaman-Durgapur.

The Saffron party on Friday had released its fourth list of 15 candidates focusing on Puducherry and Tamil Nadu seats. BJP fielded A Namassivayam from Puducherry, actor and politician Raadhika Sarathkumar from Virudhnagar, Pon V Balaganapathy from Tiruvallur (SC), RC Paul Kangaraj from Chennai North and P Karthiyayini from Chidambaram (SC). Former AIADMK leader, P Karthiyayini had jumped ship to BJP in 2017.

In its third list of 9 candidates from Tamil Nadu released on March 21, BJP pitted former Telangana Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan from Chennai South. Soundararajan had resigned from the post of Telangana governor a few days ago.

Other big names on the list included L Murugan, who will contest from Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai from Coimbatore, and Pon Radhakrishnan from Kanyakumari.

BJP had released its first list of 195 candidates on March 2 announcing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi for a third time. The party had released a second list of 75 candidates which featured 11 Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, Anurag Singh Thakur and Pralhad Joshi on March 13.