BJP denies Lok Sabha ticket to 6 UP lawmakers including Union Minister

Lucknow: Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, six BJP lawmakers from Uttar Pradesh, including Union Minister Krishna Raj and National Commission for Scheduled Castes chairman Ram Shankar Katheria, have been benched.
The BJP announced its first list of 184 candidates for the national elections , fielding Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh from Lucknow.
The party also nominated Smriti Irani from Amethi to take on Rahul Gandhi.
Others who have been refused party nominations are Anshul Verma from Hardoi, Babulal Chaudhary from Fatehpur Sikri, Anju Bala from Misrikh and Satya Pal Singh from Sambhal.
The new candidates who have been given tickets from these constituencies are SP Singh Baghel in Agra, Parameshwar Lal Saini in Sambhal, Raj Kumar Chaher in Fatehpur Sikri, Jai Prakash Rawat in Hardoi, Ashok Rawat in Misrikh and Arun Sagar in Shahjahanpur.
In the previous elections, with 5.8 lakh votes PM Modi had defeated AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal who had received 2 lakh votes in Varanasi.
In Lucknow, Rajnath Singh with 5.6 lakh votes defeated Rita Bahuguna Joshi of Congress by 2.7 lakh votes.
However, in Amethi, BJP’s Smriti Irani lost to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi by over one lakh votes.
In the first list in UP, the candidates who have got the ticket are: Raghav Lakhanpal (Saharanpur), Sanjeev Kumar Baliyan (Muzaffarnagar), Kunwar Bhartendra Singh (Bijnor), Rajendra Agrawal (Meerut), Satya Pal Singh (Baghpat), Vijay Kumar Singh (Ghaziabad) and Mahesh Sharma (Gautam Buddh Nagar).
Of them, VK Singh is Minister of State for External Affairs, Mahesh Sharma is the Union Minister of State (independent charge) for Culture, while Satya Pal Singh is the Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development. The current Lok Sabha MP from Bijnor is Kunwar Bharatendra Singh.
The parliamentary constituencies in the state, which will vote on April 11 in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections are Baghpat, Bijnor, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Kairana, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Saharanpur.
Results will be declared on May 23.