Lok Sabha election 2019: BJP announces 10 candidates in Bengal; seven of them greenhorns

Seven of the 10 contestants named on Tuesday have not contested Assembly or Lok Sabha elections earlier.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday announced candidates for 10 more Lok Sabha constituencies in Bengal, taking the number of contestants named in the state with 42 seats to 40.

The BJP has so far named 40 Lok Sabha candidates for Bengal which has 40 parliamentary seats.(AFP)

Seven of the 10 contestants named on Tuesday have not contested Assembly or Lok Sabha elections earlier. Overall, 20 of the 40 candidates named for Bengal so far will be contesting elections for the first time.

Tuesday’s list released from New Delhi includes Rantidev Sengupta, a former journalist who was felicitated by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat. The list also features a professor of Visva-Bharati, two doctors, a former Trinamool Congress (TMC) minister who joined BJP last year and the president of a district unit of the Congress who recently joined the party.

Sengupta, who was associated with RSS for several years, had presided over the valedictory function of the RSS in Nagpur in 2016. In 2017, Sengupta had also organised an event in Kolkata with Bhagwat as the chief speaker.

From Bongaon, the party has fielded Shantanu Thakur, the leader of one faction of the Matua religious sect that can influence the result in about five Lok Sabha seats. Bongaon is where the members from this community live in highest concentration. Significantly, TMC’s sitting MP Mamata Thakur is the leader of the rival faction of Matua Mahasangha, the highest body of the sect.

Doctors Debasis Samanta and Mukut Mani Adhikari have been fielded from Kanthi and Ranaghat, seats respectively, while Ram Prasad Das, an assistant professor at the department of social work, Visva Bharati, has been named as candidate from Bolpur.

Among state BJP leaders, actor and BJP national executive committee member Joy Banerjee has been nominated from Howrah constituency and state BJP vice-president Subhas Sarkar from Bankura, the seat from which he had contested in 2014 Lok Sabha elections as well.

Former TMC minister Humayun Kabir, who joined the BJP last year, has been pitted against Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s sitting MP Badaruddoza Khan in Murshidabad seat.

Kabir is the second Muslim in BJP’s list. The party earlier named Mahfuza Khatun, a former CPI (M) MLA who recently joined BJP, as its candidate from Jangipur, in the same district of Murshidabad where Muslims comprise about 67% of the population (census 2011).

Nilanjan Roy, former president of Congress’ Dakshin Dinajpur district unit, has been pitted against West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and incumbent in Diamond Harbour seat Abhishek Banerjee.

However, the BJP’s Murshidabad district leaders had no idea about the Beherampore candidate Krishna Juardar Arya till filing of this report.

The BJP is yet to announce candidates for Purulia and Bardhaman-Durgapur seats.