"Nagaur seat will be there": Rajasthan's BJP leader Jyoti Mirdha on NDA's 400 target

Jaipur (Rajasthan) [India], March 3 (ANI): BJP leader Jyoti Mirdha who has been from Rajasthan's Nagaur constituency for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections said that her parliamentary seat will be one among the 400 winning constituencies as targeted by the saffron party.
"PM Modi has a dream that 'Abki Baar 400 Paar for NDA', Nagaur seat will be there in this 400. When we go to people we can say confidently that the party has promised this and we will deliver it, people trust us as this is the 'Modi Ki Guarantee'..." said BJP leader Jyoti Mirdha.
In the assembly elections of 2023, Jyoti Mirdha defected from the Congress party to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She lost the assembly elections from the Nagaur Assembly seat, the BJP has nominated her again from the Nagaur seat for the Lok Sabha election.
On Saturday, the BJP released its first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, days after a marathon meeting of the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) that was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, naming 34 Union Ministers, including heavyweights such as Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh from their current Gandhinagar and Lucknow seats respectively.
In the first list of 195 candidates, the BJP included 28 women, 47 youth, 27 Scheduled Castes, 18 Scheduled Tribes and 57 OBCs. The party announced 51 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, 24 in Madhya Pradesh, 15 each in Gujarat and Rajasthan, 20 for West Bengal, 12 in Kerala, 11 each for Assam, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, nine in Telangana, five for Delhi, two for Jammu and Kashmir, two for Arunachal Pradesh, one for Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Daman and Diu also.
Of 195 candidates, 34 are Ministers from the Centre and States and two are the former Chief Ministers.
The first list of 195 candidates released by the BJP however, made some drastic changes in Delhi, it has decided to field only Manoj Tiwari, the sitting Lok Sabha member from northeast Delhi, and Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi has been replaced with young face Basuri Swaraj, daughter of late BJP veteran Sushma Swaraj, from New Delhi; former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, has been chosen to contest from Vidisha constituency in the state, Sarbananda Sonowal from Dibrugarh and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota.
With Prime Minister Modi urging senior ministers from Rajya Sabha to contest Lok Sabha elections, the party fielded Union Ministers Bhupender Yadav from Alwar in Rajasthan, Mansukh Mandaviya from Porbandar and Parshottam Rupala from Rajkot (Gujarat), Rajeev Chandrasekhar from Thiruvananthapuram, and V Muraleedharan from Attingal constituency.
Another Rajya Sabha member and national vice president of the BJP Saroj Pande will contest from the Korba Lok Sabha constituency in Chhattisgarh. Union Minister Rameshwar Teli is replaced by Cabinet minister and former Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal in the Dibrugarh (Assam) constituency.
Union Ministers who are being fielded from their sitting seats are Gajendra Shekhawat in Jodhpur, Smriti Irani in Amethi, SP Singh Baghel in Agra, Sanjeev Balyan in Muzaffarnagar, Ajay Mishra Teni in Kheri, Arjun Ram Meghwal in Bikaner, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti in Fatehpur, Subhash Sarkar in Bankura and Nishit Pramanik in Cooch Behar.
Union ministers whose names have been announced by the BJP in the first list of candidates include Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh, Bhupender Yadav, Mansukh Mandaviya, Sarbananda Sonowal, Kiren Rijiju, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Arjun Ram Meghwal, G Kishan Reddy, Arjun Munda and Smriti Irani.
Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will fight from Porbandar.
Meanwhile, Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal formally joined the BJP-led NDA alliance on Saturday.
Chaudhary met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in the national capital and announced the tie-up on his official X.
Notably, Chaudhary's RLS party was a part of the INDIA bloc and his alliance with the BJP will come as another strong blow to opposition unity, aiming to take on PM Modi in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. (ANI)