BJP picks Arun Govil, keeps Brij Bhushan's seat on hold, drops Varun Gandhi

Lucknow: The Ram of 'Ramayana' serial, Arun Govil has been named the BJP candidate from Meerut, replacing sitting MP Rajendra Agarwal.

The BJP, however, has not announced the candidate for Kaiserganj, the seat held by former WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.

The latest list of 13 candidates released by the BJP on Sunday shows that the party has denied a ticket to two of its controversial candidates -Varun Gandhi from Pilibhit and Sanghmitra Maurya from Budaun.

UP minister Jitin Prasada will contest the Pilibhit seat instead of Varun Gandhi, while Durvijay Shakya, a state General Secretary, will be the party candidate in Budaun.

Sitting MP from Ghaziabad, Gen V.K. Singh (retd), who had earlier in the day announced on social media that he did not wish to contest elections, has been replaced with Atul Garg, a minister of state in the Yogi Adityanath government.

Another UP minister of state Anoop Valmiki has replaced sitting MP Rajvir Singh Diler in Hathras.

Two sitting MPs, Maneka Gandhi and Satish Gautam, however, will contest their Sultanpur and Aligarh seats, respectively.

Sarvesh Singh has been renominated to contest the Moradabad seat. He had lost to SP's S.T. Hasan in 2019.

In Saharanpur, the BJP has again named Raghav Lakhanpal to wrest back the seat from BSP which had won in 2019.

In Kanpur, the sitting MP Satyadev Pachauri has been dropped and Ramesh Awasthi, journalist and former member of the Hindi Rajbhasha Advisory Committee, will replace him. Pachauri had also informed the party President J.P. Nadda that he did not wish to contest elections.

In Bareilly, former Union Minister Santosh Gangwar has been dropped and he will be replaced by former MLA Chhatrapal Gangwar.

In Barabanki, sitting MP Upendra Rawat has been replaced with Rajrani Rawat. Bahraich's sitting MP Akshaywar Lal Gond has been replaced by Dr Arvind Gond. (IANS)

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