Union minister Smriti Irani is among the Bharatiya Janata Party candidates whose names figured in the party’s first list for Lok Sabha elections. The list was declared by Union minister JP Nadda on Thursday evening and covered 20 states.
The Union textiles minister has been renominated from the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency from where Rahul Gandhi is contesting the election. This is the second time that she has been pitted against the Congress president.
She was fielded by the BJP in the 2014 elections to make inroads in the Gandhi family pocket borough. She did lose the battle, but managed to succeed in reducing the Congress leader’s victory margin to one lakh votes in 2014, down from three lakh five years earlier.
