NEW DELHI: With elections notified by the Election Commission for four Lok Sabha seats — Bhagalpur and Nalanda in Bihar, Koderma in Jharkhand and Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh — and for several assembly segments, the Bharatiya Janata Party central election committee is scheduled to meet here on Friday to finalise its candidates.

The stakes are high for the National Democratic Alliance as all the four seats were won by it in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls. The BJP held Bhagalpur, Koderma and Vidisha while Nalanda was with the Janata Dal (United).

Vidisha seat

There is suspense regarding the candidate for the Vidisha seat for which some senior party leaders — reportedly including the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani — favour Varun, son of Maneka Gandhi. The State unit of Madhya Pradesh, including Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, is opposing the fielding of Mr. Gandhi strongly. The Vidisha seat was vacated by Mr. Chauhan after he became Chief Minister.

It seems that the State unit has gone to the extent of warning the party's central leadership that if Mr. Gandhi were to be given the ticket the BJP would have difficulty retaining the seat it has been winning with a handsome margin. Party workers in Madhya Pradesh are apparently opposed to the imposition of an outsider who, as one senior BJP leader put it " has taken no interest whatsoever in the State's politics and is not even a national level leader."

In Bhagalpur, among the prominent names that would be considered is that of the former Cabinet Minister, Shahnawaz Husain. The BJP's Bihar unit seems to be favouring him for the seat vacated by the Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi. A senior leader said that the names of Kirti Azad and some other local leaders would also be placed before the central election committee.

In Koderma, where the former BJP leader Babulal Marandi resigned from the party and vacated the seat, the BJP is likely to give the ticket to a local leader. The BJP leadership has conceded that it would be a "tough fight" in Koderma but the "arithmetic could change" because now it would be a three-cornered contest between the United Progressive Alliance, the BJP and Mr. Marandi, who is almost sure to contest it.

The Nalanda seat was vacated by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and would, in all probability, be contested by a local MLA of the JD (U), BJP sources said.

One Assembly segment in Madhya Pradesh, Bada Malera, could also be very significant for the BJP as that was the seat vacated by the former chief minister, Uma Bharati. If Ms. Bharati decides to contest the seat, the segment would see an all-out fight between the party candidate and its former star campaigner turned bitter critic.

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