VIJAYAWADA: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will release the first list of candidates for the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) on Friday.

Party State unit president N. Indrasena Reddy will announce the names of the contestants from 30 divisions of the corporation. Selected candidates are likely to begin their election campaign on Friday evening.

The BJP city unit has taken up a massive exercise to send a final list of probable candidates to the party president. It has received as many as 326 applications from ticket aspirants.

A five-member committee with representatives of the party's city and State units shortlisted the names of 60 candidates for 30 divisions. The committee will begin the second round of exercise to shortlist the applications for the rest of 29 wards on Saturday and the final list of candidates will be announced by Mr. Indrasena Reddy on Sunday.

Over five applications

"We have received more than five applications from each division and completed over 50 per cent of the selections from our side so far. We are fielding candidates from all the 59 divisions in the city," says BJP city unit president L.R.K. Prasad.

The party has given the authority of finalising candidates for the municipalities to party district unit president V. Srimannarayana. A committee consisting of five members at each municipality is sending the list of two to three probable candidates to the district unit president, from which he is choosing the candidates.

Of the 42 wards in Machilipatnam municipality, the party announced its candidates from 20 wards. Similarly, announcement of candidates has been completed for 14 wards out of 36 in Gudivada, 10 out of 30 wards in Nuzvid, 16 out of 23 wards in Jaggayyapet and 10 out of 23 wards in Pedana Municipality.

"Competition for the party ticket is high in Machilipatnam. The response is good even from the remaining four municipalities. Finalisation of candidates will be completed in two to three days," says Mr. Srimannarayana.

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