Jaya Prada joins BJP, to contest against Azam Khan

New Delhi: Former Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada on Tuesday joined the BJP and will challenge SP’s heavyweight and her one time mentor in the party Azam Khan from the Rampur parliamentary seat.

The sitting MP from Rampur is BJP’s Nepal Singh. The BJP leadership also decided to swap the parliamentary constituencies of Union minister Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi. Now Ms Gandhi will contest from Sultanpur while her son will contest from Pilibhit where SP-BSP-RLD has fielded Hemraj Verma of Akhilesh Yadav led party.

After his name was officially announced by the BJP’s central election committee (CEC), Mr Gandhi tweeted, “I would like to thank the Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hon’ble BJP President Amit Shah for reposing their faith in me. I’m honoured to be returning to Pilibhit — with which I have a familial bond - and hope to make it a meaningful, issue-based election.”

In all, the party’s CEC on Tuesday released 29 more candidates names from Uttar Pradesh and 10 from West Bengal, including that of veteran actor Joy Mukherjee from Uluberia and former TMC leader Humayun Kabir from Mursidabad.

While Union communications minister Manoj Sinha has been renominated from Ghazipur, UP state minister Rita Bahuguna Joshi has been fielded from Prayagraj.

Another state minister Satyadev Pachauri will contest from Kanpur, which is represented by party veteran Murli Manohar Joshi in the 16th Lok Sabha.

After joining the saffron fold in presence of BJP general secretary Bhupe-ndra Yadav, Ms Prada lau-ded Mr Modi and des-cribed him as a “brave” leader in whose hands the country is “safe”.