Patna, Sept. 28: After two days of deliberations, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today released the first list of candidates for the Bihar Assembly elections. The party, after meeting of central election committee, released a list of 87 candidates late on Tuesday evening. The BJP would be contesting 102 of the 243 seats in Bihar leaving the remaining ones to the NDA alliance partner, JD(U).

As many as four sitting MLAs of the party failed to win the confidence of the BJP top leadership and their names didn’t figure in the list of candidates which was issued in Delhi.

The most prominent omission was that of Bihar environment and forest minister Ramji Rishideo who represented the Raniganj seat in the state Assembly. He was denied a party ticket and in his place BJP has opted for Parmanand Rishideo as party official candidate.

Parmanand had contested as a BJP candidate from Raniganj in February 2005 Assembly polls and had won the seat but he failed to get the party ticket when state went to polls once again in November 2005.

Another notable replacement in the list is that of Padma Parag Renu, son of late Phanishwar Nath Renu, a well known Hindi laureate. The junior Renu would be the BJP’s official candidate from Forbesganj. Sitting MLA from this seat Lakshmi Narayan Mehta has been denied a party ticket this time, a BJP functionary who refused to be named told The Telegraph.

BJP sitting MLA from Saharsa Sanjeev Jha too has been denied a ticket this time and Alok Ranjan Jha would be the official candidate of the party from this constituency.

Similarly BJP Begusarai sitting MLA Sri Krishna Singh has been denied a ticket this time and Surendra Mehta would be the party candidate from this seat in the coming Assembly polls.

Terming the denial of party tickets to four sitting MLAs on expected lines, a BJP functionary, preferring anonymity, said, “The central leadership was very much particular about denial of party tickets to such candidates whose chances of winning were very thin. Once should be surprised if some more sitting MLAs failed to get tickets when the party releases the list of candidates for the remaining 15 seats which the BJP would contest.”

Giving reasons for making Chandra Mohan Rai the party candidate from Chanpatia despite the fact that the state leaders were not happy with his open utterances against the leadership, the BJP official said: “The central leadership has its own resources to take feedback.”