The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday announced its first list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, fielding its prime ministerial candidate L K Advani from Gandhinagar in Gujarat.
    
"The countdown to the end of the UPA rule has begun from today. Our prime ministerial candidate L K Advani would be contesting from the Gandhinagar parliamentary seat," party general secretary Anant Kumar said while announcing the list at the party headquarters in New Delhi.
    
The list also included the names of five other candidates: Navjot Singh Sidhu from Amritsar [Images]; Vinod Khanna from Gurdaspur; Shripad Naik from Panaji; Anurag Thakur from Hamirpur; and TPS Rawat from Pauri.
    
The decision was taken at the meeting of the party's central election committee in Delhi on Thursday, Kumar added.
    
The CEC meeting, chaired by party president Rajnath Singh was followed by a meeting of the central election management committee and the party's core group.
    
"The present political scenario and the ensuing instability in the centre was discussed threadbare. The core group also delved upon the situation arising if the Manmohan Singh [Images] government was reduced to a minority," sources said.
    
Thursday's meetings were attended by the party's senior leaders like L K Advani, Venkaiah Naidu, Murli Manohar Joshi, Vinay Katiyar, Anant Kumar and Sushma Swaraj among others.
    
Party representatives from Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Goa [Images] were also present in the meetings.
    
The party plans to announce its candidates for all seats by the end of August and the state units have been asked to send their inputs on candidate selection by then, Naidu told reporters after the meeting.