The Bharatiya Janata Party released its third list of candidates past midnight on Friday, and scotched all speculation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may contest a second seat from Puri in Odisha by announcing the name of party spokesperson Sambit Patra as candidate.
In all, the third list contained 36 names — six candidates from Maharashtra, five from Odisha and one each from Assam and Meghalaya.
Apart from this, the party also released a list of candidates for 22 Assembly seats slated to go into polls on April 11th along with the first phase of polling for Lok Sabha. The BJP had earlier released candidates for 10 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats and 99 out of 147 Assembly seats in the state.
In Maharashtra, BJP dropped its sitting MP Anil Shirole and fielded Girish Bapat, Minister in the Devendra Fadnavis government.
In Assam, the party announced State Minister Pallab Lochan Das as candidate from the Tezpur seat, dropping sitting MP Ram Prasad Sharma. Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was earlier considered for the seat but the party decided not to go ahead with his candidature looking at his role as convenor of the North Eastern Democratic Alliance (NEDA).
