Sitharaman, Jaishankar will contest Lok Sabha polls, seats not decided, says Minister Pralhad Joshi
Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, their cabinet colleague Pralhad Joshi said on Monday without elaborating much on the subject.
“It is more or less decided that they will contest the LS polls,” he told the media in Dharwad while adding that the party was yet to take a call on whether either of them should contest from Karnataka or both from outside.
It is often speculated that either Jaishankar or Sitharaman will contest from Bengaluru as the BJP won all three seats in the city in 2019. The FM represents Karnataka in the Rajya Sabha and is also quite familiar with Tamil Nadu and Telangana. Born in Madurai, she toured Tamil Nadu ahead of the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha in January and watched the ceremony from Kanchipuram. Jaishankar, who did his early schooling in Bengaluru, actively campaigned for the party ahead of the assembly polls, last year.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MoS in the ministry of Electronics & IT, is likely to contest from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, according to speculations in the BJP circles. The party has not re-nominated him for the Rajya Sabha paving way for his contest for the parliamentary elections. A businessman turned politician born to Malayali parents, Chandrasekhar backed Bengaluru-focussed campaigns in the past, but the party sources said the leadership may ask him to contest from Kerala’s capital. Congress member Shashi Tharoor currently holds Thiruvananthapuram seat.
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