PM Modi, other senior BJP leaders meet to pick candidates for LS polls

New Delhi: The BJP's Central Election Committee met here on Saturday to finalise the party's candidates in several states for the Lok Sabha polls.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP president J P Nadda were joined by other CEC members as they went over the list of probables to take a final call.

The states for which candidates were discussed include Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Rajasthan.

With the BJP and BJD alliance talks falling through, the CEC discussed candidates for all 21 Lok Sabha seats and 147 assembly seats in Odisha, state BJP president Manmohan Samal told reporters.

Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan and BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra are likely to be fielded from Odisha's Sambalpur and Puri respectively.

The CEC has met twice earlier and has named candidates for 291 Lok Sabha seats so far, including in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala and Telangana.

The BJP is yet to announce candidates for many seats in some of these states.

At least three of the declared candidates, including Bhojpuri singer Pawan Singh, have withdrawn from the fray after their names drew some controversy or other.

The names of the leading figures of the party, including Modi, Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, have already been announced for the polls and all of them are contesting from their current constituencies.

The seven-phase polls are set to be held between April 19 and June 1 to elect MPs for 543 Lok Sabha seats, with the counting of votes scheduled for June 4.