West Bengal Elections: BJP releases 3rd list of candidates

BJP on Tuesday released its third list of 14 candidates for the West Bengal Assembly elections, taking the total number of seats for which it has announced nominees to 260 out of a total of 294 constituencies.

It also announced its first list of 22 candidates for Kerala Assembly polls and the names include that of its state chief Kummanam Rajasekharan, who will contest from Vattiyoorkavu, and O Rajagopal who is to be the candidate from Nemom. In West Bengal, the party has left three seats, Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Kurseong, for its ally Gorkha Janmukti Morcha.

West Bengal will have elections over six phases between April 4 and May 5. The list for Kerala was almost finalised at the Central Election Committee meeting held last week but was not released due to certain reasons, party sources said.

Earlier, at a party briefing, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar, who is also in charge of Tamil Nadu polls, said former BJP allies in the state like Vijayakanth of DMDK have to take a call on the alliance for the Assembly polls.
BJP has received 3,000 applications from prospective candidates, he said, adding that a lot of time is still left before the finalisation of names.