PANAJI: The Bharatiya Janata Party will contest the forthcoming state assembly election in 37 out of 40 constituencies, excluding Velim, Benaulim and Nuvem. However, the BJP can extend support to candidates in these constituencies.
Coming out with this information, state president of BJP Vinay Tendulkar on Tuesday said that the core committee of the state BJP has already shortlisted candidates for the said polls in 22 constituencies, and would complete the exercise for the remaining 15 constituencies by January 8.
Meanwhile, the central leadership of BJP has cleared the 14-member state election committee headed by Tendulkar and including Manohar Parrikar, Laxmikant Parsekar, Francis D’Souza, Shripad Naik and Narendra Sawaikar among others, as its members. The state core committee of the party will forward the names of the shortlisted candidates for the 2017 state assembly polls to the state election committee, which, in turn, would forward it to the BJP Central Parliamentary Board for its approval.
Coming out with the information that the BJP Central Parliamentary Board could meet during the national executive meeting of the party scheduled to be held in New Delhi on January 6 and 7, Tendulkar said that in such a case the names of the shortlisted candidates could be put up before the members of the Board.
Speaking further, Tendulkar said that the state core committee has shortlisted party’s candidates for the forthcoming state assembly election only after consultations with the Mandal committees and party workers in the respective constituencies. “And in most of the 22 constituencies discussed so far, we have only one shortlisted candidate,” he revealed, adding that the final candidate would be selected by consensus in few of the constituencies, which have more than one shortlisted candidate.
The state BJP chief also maintained that the list of the final candidates of BJP in 37 electoral constituencies would be announced in a week’s time. “The president of the election management committee of the state BJP, Manohar Parrikar, will guide the election campaign, with the party expecting to win 25 to 26 seats at the particular election,” he concluded.
