New Delhi: In a major decision, the BJP on Tuesday announced that it will drop all its 10 incumbent MPs from Chhattisgarh and replace them with new faces in the Lok Sabha polls, a decision that comes in the wake of the party's drubbing in recent assembly elections.
BJP general secretary Anil Jain, also the party affairs in-charge for the state, made the announcement as the BJP's Central Election Committee, which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top leaders, met here to deliberate over its candidates for the polls.
BJP General Secretary Anil Jain, who is also in charge of the state, said the party has decided to face the Lok Sabha elections with "new candidates and fresh energy" to make it victorious under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"We have decided to fight the elections with new candidates and new zeal," Jain told reporters.
The party decision means that Union minister Vishnu Deo Sai and seven times Lok Sabha member and former Union minister Ramesh Bais will not be fielded in the polls. The announcement underscores the BJP's bid to wrest its lost territory back from the Congress, which handed it a massive defeat in the assembly polls last year.
The Congress had won sixty-eight seats, reducing the tally of the BJP, which was in power in the state for fifteen years, to a mere 15. The difference in the vote share of the two parties was a huge 10 per cent.
The BJP is also considering not fielding any family member of these sitting MPs, sources said. If the party indeed adopts this criterion, the likely candidature of former chief minister Raman Singh, whose son Abhishek Singh is a sitting Member of Parliament, will also be in question.