New Delhi: After L K Advani, BJP has denied ticket to another old warhorse of the party, Murli Manohar Joshi. The party has decided to replace him with Satyadev Pachauri in the Kanpur Parliamentary constituency.
In the tenth list of candidates for 29 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 10 in West Bengal, the BJP also announced that Union Minister Maneka Gandhi and her MP son Varun Gandhi will swap their seats. While Maneka Gandhi will contest from Sultanpur, Varun Gandhi has been given a ticket from Pilibhit.
Earlier the party had dropped Advani for the Gandhinagar constituency in Gujarat, replacing him with party president Amit Shah.
Union Minister Manoj Sinha has been fielded from Ghazipur, a seat he had won in 2014, and Uttar Pradesh government minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi has been fielded from the prestigious Allahabad constituency.
Actor-politician Jaya Prada was fielded from Rampur hours after she joined the party on Tuesday. UP BJP president Mahendra Nath Pandey has been repeated from Chandauli.
Joshi, 85, had won from Kanpur in 2014 but was told by the party leadership that he would not be fielded in the coming elections. The party has not given a ticket to veterans like BC Khanduri and Kalraj Mishra among others.
In the 2014 election, Joshi had vacated his Varanasi seat for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then won Kanpur by a record margin, securing 57% of the votes.
He has also not been included in the list of campaigners in Uttar Pradesh.
