Date:11/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/11/stories/2008111155751000.htm

National

Rajnath Singh to contest from Ghaziabad

Special Correspondent

Rajnath Singh

NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh will contest the Lok Sabha poll from Ghaziabad, whereas veteran party leader Murli Manohar Joshi will test the waters at Varanasi.

Although the BJP Central Election Committee took this decision here late on Sunday night, it withheld a formal announcement till Tuesday by when the senior leadership hopes to finalise a few more Lok Sabha candidates.

Mr. Singh has been nurturing the Ghaziabad constituency for some time. Apparently, his view is that since the constituency borders Delhi, it would be easier for him to look after it even as he continues to hold the office of party president.

Mr. Joshi who had lost the Allahabad Lok Sabha seat in 2004 has preferred to shift to Varanasi. After delimitation the Allahabad seat is considered more difficult for the BJP.

A formal announcement that Leader of Opposition L.K. Advani will once again seek re-election from his Gandhinagar constituency was made by the party a couple of months ago. The process of finalising candidates that the BJP had begun early was put on hold after it was felt that the exercise had begun too early and would prove to be counter productive. At the same time the BJP wants to remove uncertainty about some of its top leaders.

There was a view in the party that not enough senior leaders were members of the fourteenth Lok Sabha. This needed to be corrected. With V.K. Malhotra now contesting the Delhi Assembly polls, another senior leader would be absent in the Lok Sabha.

Currently some of the big BJP guns are in the Rajya Sabha. That list includes Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi, Jaswant Singh, Venkaiah Naidu,Yashwant Sinha, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj. By contrast, in the current Lok Sabha there are only Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani and V.K. Malhotra. With Mr. Vajpayee not attending parliament because of ill-health, the absence of senior leaders was felt. To correct this imbalance, it was felt that some senior party leaders must contest the Lok Sabha election rather than rely on a Rajya Sabha ticket to come to Parliament.