Sons of Jaswant, Vasundhra in BJP list

With Arun Jaitley, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi opting out of the electoral fray, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today announced the fourth list of 36 candidates, which included children of senior party leaders.

The most significant names featured in the lists of candidates for Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. In Rajasthan, the BJP has declared the names of 18 candidates, which included Manvendra Singh, son of Union Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, from Barmer and Dushyant Singh, son of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje, his mother's constituency, Jhalawar. She had been elected from here five times.

Interestingly, at the meeting of the party central election committee yesterday, Raje proposed the name of BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan as a candidate for Jaipur Lok Sabha seat. But this was ruled out by BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu on the plea that Mahajan would be managing the poll campaign all over the country.

The party decided to re-nominate Girdharilal Bhargava, who represented the seat for the successive five terms. An intense lobbying was on in the state party unit to prevent Bhargava's candidature from Jaipur this time.

Similarly, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti proposed the name of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as candidate from Bhopal. Later she pitched for Jaitley, which was not acceptable to Naidu. The party named former MP unit chief Kailash Joshi from Bhopal.

In Rajgarh, a traditional Congress bastion, the BJP has fielded Digvijay Singh's brother Laxman Singh, who had won the seat in 1999 as the Congress candidate.

The party's sitting MP Ram Krishna Kusmaria, who had been elected from Satna in Madhya Pradesh in the dissolved Lok Sabha, was moved to Khajuraho. Though Naidu ruled out the possibility of Mahajan, Jaitley, Naqvi and Swaraj contesting polls because of their pre-occupation with the campaign, there is speculation about Swaraj contesting from Kanpur.

But the BJP has avoided naming candidate for Amethi from where Rahul Gandhi is contesting. In case of Rae Bareli, the party had almost decided to back Samajwadi Party candidate Ashok Singh, BJP sources said.

The last-minute addition to the list was new entrant to the party, Shubhanghani Devi Gaekwad, a scion of royal family, from Kheda in Gujarat. She had joined the party last Sunday.

But what appears to have come as a relief for the National Democratic Alliance is the finalisation of the seat sharing arrangement between the BJP and JD(U) in Karnataka, where the BJP has conceded four Lok Sabha seats to the alliance partner. The BJP will now contest 24 seats, said Jaitley, who played a key role in clinching the pact.