KOLKATA: The BJP on Saturday announced candidates for the Jhargram (ST) and Birbhum Lok Sabha seats on Saturday night. While Dr Pranat Tudu has been fielded from Jhargram, former IPS officer Debashis Dhar will contest from Birbhum.
Tudu will lock horns with his principal rival Kalipada Soren of the TMC while Dhar is pitted against actor-turned-sitting MP Satabdi Roy.
Tudu, a physician, said he is happy as the national leadership reposed faith in him and he is hopeful about serving the poor in a new way.
With Saturday’s announcement, the BJP named candidates for 40 out of 42 seats so far. Diamond Harbour and Asansol seats, where the sitting MPs are Abhishek Banerjee and Shatraghan Sinha, both of the TMC, are now left.
TMC spokesperson and former MP Santanu Sen said in a post on X, “@BJP4India and @BJP4Bengal are yet to find a person to face the Royal Bengal Tiger in Diamond Harbour Abhishek Banerjee, the national general secretary of @AITCofficial.”
“They couldn’t find candidate for the Asansol too, where the declared candidate already ran away,” Sen posted.
BJP had declared Bhojpuri singer and actor Pawan Singh as its nominee for Asansol but he announced his inability to contest the next day.
Though he had not specified the reason behind his decision to not contest from Asansol, his candidature had drawn criticism from the TMC, which alleged that some of his songs were crude and depicted women, including those from Bengal, in a vulgar way.