New Delhi [India], October 16 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday released a list of 40 star campaigners for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections, featuring prominent leaders such as Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP National President JP Nadda.
It also features Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari and Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, and Textile Minister Giriraj Singh.
The BJP's list of 40 star campaigners for the Bihar assembly elections features a mix of prominent leaders, chief ministers, and celebrities. It includes 5 BJP Chief Ministers -- Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, Assam CM Hemanta Biswa Sarma, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta, Madhya Pradesh CM Mohan Yadav and Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis.
It also brings back people out of the political limelight for a while, and the ones who haven't received a ticket to fight elections, former Union cabinet minister Smriti Irani is the biggest name of it, which also includes former Central ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Radha Mohan Singh, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, and Ashwini Kumar Chaubey.
Besides him, both the deputy CMs of Bihar, Samrat Chaudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, are on the roll, along with former deputy CM Renu Devi and several other state ministers.
The list also includes Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya and Union Water Minister CR Patil, Dr. Dilip Kumar Jaiswal, Prem Kumar, Nityanand Rai, Satish Chandra Dubey, Raj Bhushan Choudhary, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal, Vinod Tawde, Babulal Marandi, Pradeep Kumar Singh, Gopaljee Thakur and Janak Ram,
It also includes some of the biggest names from the Bhojpuri cinema, actor-singer turned politician Pawan Singh, Manoj Tiwari, Ravi Kishan, Dinesh Lal Yadav "Nirahua."
The last date for nomination for the first phase of the Bihar assembly elections is October 17, while the polling will take place on November 6.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party released its third list of candidates for the Bihar assembly polls, which featured 18 names.
Meanwhile, the Janata Dal (United) released its second list of 44 candidates on Thursday, bringing the total number to 101, along with the BJP. Other NDA allies, including Rashtriya Lok Morcha and Hindustani Awam Morcha, have also declared their six candidates each, whereas the Lok Janshakti Party (Ramvilas), headed by Chirag Paswan, is yet to field candidates on several seats.
While the National Democratic Alliance is set to kickstart their campaigning for the Bihar elections, the Mahagathbandhan is yet to finalise its seat-sharing formula.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, also filed his nomination from Raghopur assembly constituency on Wednesday ahead of the assembly polls.
Polling for the second phase of the Bihar elections will take place on November 11, with the results announced on November 14.