THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Senior BJP leader and Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar will take on three-time MP Shashi Tharoor in the Kerala capital of Thiruvananthapuram while Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan will contest from Attingal. As expected actor-turned-politician and ex-Rajya Sabha MP Suresh Gopi will seek people’s mandate from Thrissur.The BJP’s list of candidates for 12 seats in Kerala, announced as part of its first list in Delhi on Saturday, contains two union ministers, three women in addition to two minority faces. Besides the Mahila Morcha, the party also accommodated the Yuva Morcha representative into the list. As TNIE already reported, regular faces were excluded from the candidate list.Though a slew of names including that of Union ministers S Jaishankar and Nirmala Sitharaman in addition to actor Sobhana were doing the rounds for Thiruvananthapuram, the party finally zeroed in on Rajeev Chandrasekhar.With this, the prestigious Thiruvananthapuram parliament constituency is all set to witness a strong triangular contest between NDA-LDF-UDF. While LDF has already declared former CPI state chief Pannian Raveendran as its candidate, Congress party’s incumbent MP Shashi Tharoor has already ensured his candidature from here.As expected, V Muralidharan is the candidate for the BJP in Attingal, party state general secretary C Krishna Kumar is contesting from Palakkad and Suresh Gopi is the candidate in Thrissur. No other names were proposed for these three seats from the state. The national leadership decided to put Anil Antony, son of veteran Congress leader AK Antony in Pathanamthitta.Senior leader MT Ramesh has been given the Kozhikode seat while the party’s woman face in Kerala Shoba Surendran will be fielded from Alappuzha. The party has clear calculations in fielding ex-Calicut varsity VC Abdul Salam from Malappuram. Besides Shobha, there are two other women candidates too. Niveditha Subrahmaniyan who will contest from Ponnani is the state president of Mahila Morcha and ML Aswini who will contest from party stronghold Kasaragod is the state general secretary of Mahila Morcha.List of BJP candidates in KeralaThiruvananthapuram: Rajeev ChandrasekharAttingal: V MuraleedharanPathanamthitta: Anil K AntonyAlappuzha: Shobha SurendranPalakkad: C Krishna KumarThrissur: Suresh GopiKozhikode: MT RameshMalappuram: Abdul SalamPonnani: Niveditha SubrahmanyanVadakara: CR Praphul KrishananKannur: C RaghunathKasaragod: ML Aswini
Source link
