Wrestlers Yogeshwar, Babita in BJP's Haryana candidate list

Putting an end to days of speculations, the BJP on Monday finally announced its candidate list for the October 21 Haryana Assembly elections.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will be fighting from his present Karnal seat, while wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt, who joined the BJP last week, is the nominee from the Baroda assembly seat.

Sandeep Singh, the former captain of the Indian hockey team who joined the BJP along with Dutt, has been given ticket from Pihua, while wrestler Babita Phogat, who had joined the BJP earlier, will be contesting from Dadri.

State BJP chief Subhash Barala is being fielded from Tohana.

While 38 sitting MLAs are being repeated by the party, 7 others have been replaced.

Two candidates from the Muslim community has been given the ticket this time by the saffron party.

The BJP, however, hasn't released its Maharashtra list. Party national General Secretary Arun Singh said: "We will come up with the Maharashtra list very soon."

These names were approved by the BJP's Central Election Committee that met here on Sunday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party President Amit Shah, working President J.P. Nadda, and Union Ministers Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari were some of the leaders who were present in the CEC meeting.

The ruling BJP had convened the crucial CEC meeting on Sunday, after some delay as the Prime Minister was away in the US for more than a week and only returned on Saturday evening.

The saffron party had precious little time left, as the last date for filing nominations is October 4.

The 90-member Haryana Assembly will go to the polls on October 21, while the results will be declared on October 24.IANS