New Delhi: Dynastic considerations and family ties surfaced in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) second list of candidates for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, released on Sunday.

Apart from the family members of several BJP leaders, the list of 155 candidates also has names of the BJP’s national office bearers and leaders who had recently joined from other political parties, especially the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

A prominent name in the list is that of Pankaj Singh, son of home minister Rajnath Singh. He will contest assembly polls from Noida constituency.

Pankaj Singh is a senior member of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and his father Rajnath Singh had contested the 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Ghaziabad, adjacent to Noida.

Also on the list is Ashutosh Tandon, son of senior BJP leader Lalji Tandon. Ashutosh Tandon will contest from Lucknow east.

Lalji Tandon was a Member of Parliament from Lucknow but the prestigious seat was handed over to home minister Rajnath Singh during the 2014 general elections. Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee used to represent the constituency when he was the prime minister.

“The ability to win the election for BJP has been the biggest criteria in the list of candidates for Uttar Pradesh. The list has been prepared after several rounds of discussion and on the basis of ground surveys conducted by the BJP leaders," said a BJP leader from Lucknow.

“The party is confident that the message of development of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be taken forward by the candidates," the BJP leader added.

Interestingly, among the list of candidates is Sidharth Nath Singh, who is the national secretary in BJP and is a prominent spokesperson of the party. While Singh is the grandson of prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, he was also part of the election campaign of L.K. Advani during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Singh is not alone—another national secretary Srikant Sharma was part of the first list of candidates released by the BJP on 16 January.

“The message to us is very clear—the candidates have been asked to go to the constituency and contest the elections on the message of development. The election is not just about winning but it is also about taking the message of the government to the people," the BJP leader added.

The second list of candidates also has the name of former Congress leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who will contest assembly polls from Lucknow Cantonment constituency. Joshi is the sister of Vijay Bahuguna, former chief minister of Uttarakhand, who joined the Uttarakhand unit of BJP along with several other Congress leaders after a tiff with chief minister Harish Rawat. The former Congress leader is the second member of her family to join the BJP.

The BJP leadership has also given an election ticket to Brajesh Pathak, a former MP who was a prominent BSP leader.

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