BJP Revises Candidates List For Assam, Bhojpuri Singer Declines Asansol Nomination For LS Polls

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday released a revised list of candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in Assam, rectifying errors from its earlier announcement.

Initially, the party had disclosed a list of 195 candidates, which included 11 for Assam. However, some names were inaccurate due to oversight regarding the state’s recent delimitation. “The number and name of the parliamentary constituencies have been corrected in the list of candidates for Assam state,” the party posted on X while sharing the new list.

In the updated list, Dilip Saikia has been nominated for Darrang Udalgiri, Amar Sing Tisso for Diphu, Ranjit Dutta for Tezpur, Suresh Bora for Nagaon, and Kamakhya Prasad Tasa for Kaziranga. The initial list erroneously included candidates for seats such as Mangaldai and Kaliabor, which are no longer parliamentary constituencies.

While the BJP preserved two seats for the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP), a longstanding ally, it assigned one seat to the United People’s Party Liberal (UPPL), under the leadership of Chief Promod Boro of the Bodoland Territorial Region.

In the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha constituency, the BJP has nominated Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, replacing the current MP, Rameshwar Teli.

The upcoming Lok Sabha polls will mark the first election in Assam following the delimitation exercise conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) last year.

Meanwhile, Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh declined to contest the upcoming elections, a day after the BJP named him as its candidate from Asansol. Singh’s nomination for the Asansol seat in West Bengal came as a surprise, particularly given its location within the coal mine belt of West Burdwan district.

In a statement posted on X, Singh expressed his “heartfelt gratitude to the top leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party” for declaring him as the candidate from Asansol. However, he cited unspecified reasons for his inability to contest the election.

Currently, the Asansol seat is held by Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha.

In his post on X, TMC MP Saket Gokhale targeted the BJP over Singh’s nomination saying, “Truth is Modi & BJP have rewarded Pawan Singh with a Lok Sabha ticket mainly for his vulgar & misogynist videos targeting the women of Bengal.”