Varun Gandhi's plans to enter Parliament through the bye-election in Vidisha from Madhya Pradesh were dashed on Friday when the Bharatiya Janata Party decided to give the ticket to a state minister, overlooking the claims of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for his wife.
The party also decided to give former union minister Shahnawaz Hussain the ticket from Bihar's Bhagalpur Lok Sabha constituency where Muslims are believed to have considerable clout.
The decisions were taken at a meeting of the party Central Election Committee attended among others by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and party leaders L K Advani and Rajnath Singh.
Madhya Pradesh Public Health Engineering Rampal Singh is the party's candidate for Vidisha, a saffron stronghold, which had once elected Vajpayee.
Varun, the 27-year-old
Chouhan, who had won the seat, which he resigned after becoming the chief minister November last year, tried his luck to get the ticket for his wife, which also did not find favour of the party bosses.
The election committee named journalist Pranav Kumar Verma, son of former parliamentarian R L P Verma, as its candidate for the Koderma Lok Sabha seat in Jharkhand vacated by former chief minister Babulal Marandi after he quit the BJP.
It also decided to field Kapoor Chand from Bada Malhera assembly constituency in MP from where rebel leader Uma Bharti had resigned and Sahdev Khake from Talsara assembly seat in Orissa.
