New Delhi: A day after BJP's central election committee held a meeting to finalise its candidates for Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand Assembly polls, the party announced the first list of candidates on Monday.
Addressing the press, Union Minister JP Nadda released list of 149 candidates for UP (for phase 1 and phase 2) and 64 for Uttarakhand.
Names of some of the candidates are as follows - Lakshmikant Bajpayee will contest from Meerut seat, Suresh Rana from Thana Bhawan, Sangeet Som from Sardhana, Shrikant Sharma from Mathura, Avatar Singh Badhana from Meerapur and Chetan Chauhan from Naugawan Sadat.
The seven-phase UP polls start from February 11 and the hill state goes to polls on February 14.
In UP, which has a 403-member House, polls will be held on February 11 (73 constituencies), February 15 (67 constituencies), February 19 (69), February 23 (53), February 27 (52), March 3 (49) and March 8 (40).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah besides other CEC members had attended the meeting yesterday.
In recent times, Shah has been holding deliberations with top party leaders from Uttar Pradesh to narrow down differences over likely party candidates and evolve a consensus.
The BJP has been out of power in UP since 2002 and was a declining force till the 'Modi wave' catapulted the party to an unprecedented success in 2014 Lok Sabha polls when it won 71 of the 80 seats.
In 2014 it had captured over 42 percent of vote share.
SP and BSP won a majority of 403 seats in 2012 and 2007 Assembly elections by pulling in 30.4 and 29.16 percent of votes.
(With PTI inputs)
