12 Union Ministers denied Lok Sabha ticket by BJP
Som Prakash 12th Minister to miss the bus, wife given Hoshiarpur seat
Fate of 11 Union Ministers depends on Lok Sabha results
With most candidates announced by the BJP barring a handful of them in a few states, the number of Union Ministers who have been denied the Lok Sabha tickets has gone up to 12.
It emerged that Union Minister of state Commerce & Industry Som Prakash became the 12th leader to be denied Lok Sabha ticket. He was a sitting Lok Sabha MP from Punjab's Hoshiarpur constituency.
Som Parkash, an IAS officer from the 1988 batch, first unsuccessfully contested the 2009 Lok Sabha polls from Hoshiarpur. Later, he became MLA of Phagwara in 2017, but he resigned in 2019 after being elected as Hoshiarpur MP. As a minister of state with the industry and commerce portfolios, he was involved in all talks between farmers during the farmers’ agitation.
However, his wife Anita Som Parkash has been given a ticket. The reason given was that her husband is not keeping a good health and had turned 75 years of age.
Earlier, the list of those denied Rajya Sabha seat or Lok Sabha ticket contained 11 names including Gen. V K Singh (Ghaziabad), Darshana Jardosh (Surat), Meenakshi Lekhi (new Delhi), Pratima Bhumik (Tripura West), Rajkumar Ranjan Singh (Inner Manipur), John Barla (Alipurduar, West Bengal), M Manjapara (Surendranagar, Gujarat), Bishweswar Tudu (Mayurbhanj, Odisha), Rameshwar Teli (Dibrugarh, Assam), A Narayanswamy (Chitradurga, Karnataka) and Ashwini Choubey(Buxar, Bihar). With Som Prakash missing the bus, the number rose to 12.
However, eleven Union Ministers have been given Lok Sabha tickets and their fate will depend on the outcome of Lok Sabha polls. They are; Piyush Goyal (Mumbai North), Jyotiraditya Scindia, (Guna), Dharmendra Pradhan (Sambalpur), V Murlidharan (Attingal), Bhupendra Yadav (Alwar, Rajasthan), Purushottam Rupala Rajkot), Mansukh Mandaviya, Rajeev Chandra Shekhar, Sarbanand Sonowal, and L Murugan (Nilgiri) and Narayan Rane (Ratnagiri).
