Lok Sabha elections: BJP to contest all 25 MP seats in Andhra

VISAKHAPATNAM: Contrary to conventional wisdom that the BJP will keep a low profile in the April 11 election, the party will be contesting all the 25 parliamentary and 175 state assembly seats on its own, a senior BJP leader said on Tuesday.


“The party’s parliamentary board will be meeting in the next few days to decide on the candidates for all the AP assembly and parliamentary seats in the state. We are confident of winning some seats,” Kambhampati Haribabu, 67, the Lok Sabha member for Visakhapatnam in the 16th Lok Sabha, told TOI. Apart from Haribabu, the BJP had one other Lok Sabha member —Gokaraju Ganga Raju from Narsapuram— and 4 MLAs in AP. The BJP won the seats with the support of the Telugu Desam Party with which the party had an alliance. The four MLAs were Penumetsa Vishnu Kumar Raju, Akula Satyanarayana, P Manikyala Rao and Kamineni Srinivas.