Shooter Jaspal Rana to contest LS polls on BJP ticket

Ace shooter and Asian Games gold medalist Jaspal Rana was on Thursday named as the Bharatiya Janata Party's candidate from Uttarakhand's Tehri constituency as the party declared its list of 23 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.

Rana, who is BJP President Rajnath Singh's daughter-in-law's brother, is one of the four candidates declared from Uttarakhand.

The other candidates from Uttarakhand are former union minister of state Bacchi Singh Rawat (Uddhamsingh Nagar – was Nai Nital seat pre-delimitation), Ajay Tamta (Almora-SC) and Madan Kaushik (Haridwar). Kaushik and Tamta are ministers in the Uttarakhand government.

The BJP Central Election Committee also finalised 17 candidates from West Bengal. They are former Communist Party of India Marxist Member of Parliament Bratin Sengupta from Barasat, Satya Brata Mookherjee (Krishnanagar), Subhas Chandra Burman (Balurghat), Tathagata Roy (Kolkata North), Rahul Sinha (Bankura), Dipen Pramanik (Jalpaiguri-SC), Nabendu Mahali (Jhargram-ST).

Other candidates are Prabhakar Tiwari (Barrackpore), former Indian Police Services officer Dawa Sherpa (Darjeeling), Rahul Chakrabarty (Uluberia), Swapan Kumar Das (Basirhat), Debabrata Choudhary (Sreerampur), Amalesh Mishra (Kanthi), Rajshree Choudhary (Tamluk), Mahitosh Bauri (Bardhaman Eas t), Bhabendra Nath Burman (Cooch Behar-SC) and Polly Mukherjee (Howrah).

Narendra Sawaikar will contest from Murmugao (Goa) while B P Ray is the BJP candidate from Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The BJP also announced the candidature of Tapan Ghosh for the by-election to West Bengal assembly constituency of Bishnupur West.

With this, the total number of candidates announced by the BJP has touched 75.