LUCKNOW: On Thursday, The BJP announced its first list of 184 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections fielding Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow. Six BJP parliamentarians from Uttar Pradesh, including Union Minister Krishna Raj and National Commission for Scheduled Castes chairman Ram Shankar Katheria, have been benched ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The party nominated Smriti Irani once again from Amethi to take on Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

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Here it is to be noted that besides Krishna Raj, MP from Shahjahanpur, and Ram Shankar Katheria, from Agra, others who have been refused party nominations are Anshul Verma from Hardoi, Babulal Chaudhary from Fatehpur Sikri, Anju Bala from Misrikh and Satya Pal Singh from Sambhal. Krishna Raj is the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. The new candidates fielded from these constituencies by the BJP are SP Singh Baghel in Agra, Parameshwar Lal Saini in Sambhal, Raj Kumar Chaher in Fatehpur Sikri, Jai Prakash Rawat in Hardoi, Ashok Rawat in Misrikh and Arun Sagar in Shahjahanpur.

However, in last elections, with 5.8 lakh votes PM Modi had defeated AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal who had got 2 lakh votes in Varanasi. In Lucknow, Rajnath Singh with 5.6 lakh votes had defeated Rita Bahuguna Joshi of the Congress by 2.7 lakh votes. In Amethi, BJP''s Smriti Irani lost to Congress president Rahul Gandhi by over one lakh votes. In the first list in UP, the candidates who have got the ticket are: Raghav Lakhanpal (Saharanpur), Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan (Muzaffarnagar), Kunwar Bhartendra Singh (Bijnor), Rajendra Agrawal (Meerut), Satya Pal Singh (Baghpat), Vijay Kumar Singh (Ghaziabad) and Mahesh Sharma (Gautam Buddh Nagar).

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To be noted that of them, VK Singh is Minister of State for External Affairs, Mahesh Sharma is the Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Culture, while Satya Pal Singh is the Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development. The current Lok Sabha MP from Bijnor is Kunwar Bharatendra Singh. The parliamentary constituencies in the state, which will vote on April 11 in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections are Baghpat, Bijnor, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Kairana, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur. Results will be declared on May 23.