Lok Sabha elections 2019: BJP fields Kanna Lakshminarayana, Daggubati Purandhareswari in LS polls in Andhra Pradesh

The BJP’s Central Election Commission had released the full list of candidates for the 175 Assembly segments in Andhra Pradesh on March 17.

The BJP’s central election committee on Thursday released the first list of the party’s Lok Sabha candidates, fielding the party’s Andhra Pradesh president Kanna Lakshminarayana in Narasaraopeta and former union minister Purandhareswari in Visakhapatnam.

A BJP supporter waves a party flag.(PTI File Photo/Representative image)

Purandhareswari is poised to take a plunge into the electoral fray from Visakhapatnam, a seat held by the party’s former president Kambhampati Haribabu in the outgoing 16th Lok Sabha, for the second time. She had earlier gone to Parliament from Visakhapatnam and from Bapatla on Congress tickets twice to become a union minister of Commerce and Textiles and Human Resource Development during the UPA regime. However, she lost the Rajampeta Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and currently heads the BJP’s women’s organisation Mahila Morcha.

For the first time, Kanna will be entering the Parliamentary elections after having served as a five-time MLA from Guntur district, Minister for Agriculture, Minister of Major Industries and Transport minister during the previous Congress governments headed by the late YS Rajasekhar Reddy, K. Rosaiah and N. Kirankumar Reddy. He switched to the BJP after the state’s bifurcation in 2014.

The BJP contested four Lok Sabha seats - Visakhapatnam, Rajampeta, Tirupati and Narasapuram - in alliance with the TDP in 2014 and had won Narasapuram and Visakhapatnam seats. Now, it is going solo after severing links with the TDP to test the waters in the southern state, a home turf for regional parties.

The BJP’s Central Election Commission had released the full list of candidates for the 175 Assembly segments in Andhra Pradesh on March 17.