The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday announced candidates for 59 of the 70 Uttarakhand Assembly seats, which included Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami from the Khatima constituency.
The list included six women candidates, including former Congress MLA Sarita Arya who joined the BJP this week from Nainital. The party dropped 10 of its sitting MLAs, including Ritu Khanduri Bhushan, the daughter of former Chief Minister B.C. Khanduri, from Yamkeshwar constituency.
The list of candidates included Ramsharan Nautiyal, the father of singer Jubin Nautiyal, from Chakrata constituency. State BJP president Madan Kaushik retained his ticket from Haridwar.
After the announcement of the list, Mr. Dhami said in a series of tweets that he was confident of the party winning more than 60 seats in the February 14 elections.
While announcing the list at the party headquarters here, Union Minister and party leader Prahlad Joshi said the “caste-wise” split among the candidates named were “three Banias” and “15 Brahmins”.
He said the BJP would go into the elections with the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make this decade the decade of Uttarakhand.
Mr. Joshi said the NDA government in the Centre and the BJP government in Uttarakhand from 2017 had carried out development works that had been pending for years.
