Lok Sabha polls: BJP releases first list of candidates, Modi to contest from Varanasi

Senior party leader JP Nadda told a press conference that the party also decided to field Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow and another Union minister Nitin Gadkari from Nagpur. Both leaders had won from these seats in the last general election.

Union Minister Smriti Irani has been renominated from Amethi and will take on Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Union Minister Babul Supriyo will fight to retain his Asanol seat, where he will face Trinamool Congress's Moon Moon Sen. The BJP has also fielded Bengali film actress Locket Chatterjee from Hooghly.

Union minister Kiren Rijiju to fight from Arunachal East. The BJP has also renominated Union ministers V K Singh and Mahesh Shamra from Ghaziabad and Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), respectively.

BJP's Kerala strongman Kummanam Rajasekharan, who recently quit as Mizoram Governor, will fight against Congress's Shashi Tharoor in Thiruvanthapuram, while Union Minister K.J. Alphons will contest from Ernakulam.

The BJP also fielded its Tamil Nadu unit chief Tamilisai Soundararajan from Thoothukudi from where DMK's K. Kanimozhi is contesting.

The BJP also fielded Baijayant 'Jay' Panda, who had quit Odisha's ruling Biju Janata Dal to join it, from Kendrapara.

The BJP announced its candidates from many states, including Uttar Prdesh, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura.

The BJP has finalised names of all 17 party candidates from Bihar and sent the list to the state unit which will announce it jointly with allies, Nadda said.

Lok Sabha elections will begin on April 11 and continue for over a month till May 19 across seven phases, followed by counting of votes on May 23.

The polling will be held on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19 for 543 Lok Sabha seats across the country in which nearly 90 crore voters would be eligible to vote.