BJP 1st list: Bansuri Swaraj makes poll debut; Bidhuri, Lekhi dropped

Bansuri Swaraj, the daughter of former Union minister Sushma Swaraj, will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from the New Delhi seat and incumbent MP Manoj Tiwari from Northeast Delhi as the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday announced the names of five candidates from the national capital, dropping four MPs -- Meenakshi Lekhi, Harsh Vardhan, Parvesh Verma and Ramesh Bidhuri.

Bansuri Swaraj is set to make her poll debut in the general election likely to be held in April-May.

Former South Delhi mayor and Delhi BJP general secretary Kamaljeet Sehrawat will contest the polls from West Delhi.

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Sehrawat has replaced two-time incumbent MP Parvesh Verma, the son of former Delhi chief minister Sahib Singh Verma. Sehrawat belongs to the Jat community.

Sources claimed that Verma could be fielded from a Jat-dominated seat in a neighbouring state.

The BJP is yet to announce its candidates from East Delhi and North West Delhi.

Hours before the announcement of the candidates, incumbent MP from East Delhi Gautam Gambhir said in a post on X that he has urged BJP president J P Nadda to relieve him of his political duties so that he can focus on his commitments in the field of cricket.

Two-time incumbent MP from North East Delhi Manoj Tiwari has been re-nominated from the seat. Among the five candidates declared by the BJP on Saturday, Tiwari, a famous Bhojpuri actor-singer, is the only incumbent MP.

In another surprising move, the saffron party dropped its two-time South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri and gave a poll ticket to Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Ramvir Singh Bidhuri.

Ramvir Singh Bidhuri is an MLA from the Badarpur Assembly segment in the South Delhi Lok Sabha constituency. Delhi BJP leaders speculated that Ramesh Bidhuri lost his ticket due to a recent controversy involving his behaviour towards a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MP in Parliament.

At 71, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri is the oldest among the five candidates. Both Ramvir Singh Bidhuri and Ramesh Bidhuri belong to the Gujjar community.

A Supreme Court lawyer and the secretary of the Delhi BJP, Bansuri Swaraj was favoured by the party over Lekhi, a two-time MP from the New Delhi seat and Union minister. The sources said Lekhi could be fielded in the election from Chandigarh.

Praveen Khandelwal, the secretary of the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), is the BJP candidate from Chandni Chowk. The party chose him, dropping two-time MP from the seat and former Union health minister Harsh Vardhan.

The saffron party is likely to declare its candidates for East Delhi and North West Delhi in its second list of nominees.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva, general secretary Harsh Vardhan and treasurer Vishnu Mittal are the frontrunners for these two seats.

North West Delhi, the only reserved Lok Sabha constituency among the seven in the national capital, is currently held by Punjabi Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans.

Apart from Hans, who won the last poll with a huge margin of more than 5.5 lakh votes, BJP national general secretary Dushyant Gautam is a strong contender for the seat.

The BJP is pitted against the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc constituents Aam Aadmi Party and Congress in Delhi.

The AAP has already declared its candidates from East Delhi, West Delhi, New Delhi and South Delhi.

The Congress is yet to declare its candidates from the three seats it got under a seat-sharing arrangement with the AAP -- North East Delhi, Chandni Chowk and North West Delhi.