Calcutta, March 17: The BJP has fielded actress Roopa Ganguly from the Howrah North Assembly seat, where she will take on Trinamul's Laxmi Ratan Shukla, a former Bengal cricket captain.

The BJP said it was banking on Roopa's star power and added that the party avoided giving her a ticket for a Calcutta seat as a loss would be a setback to her "promising" political career.

Trinamul's Ashok Ghosh had won the Howrah North Assembly seat in 2011 by a margin of close to 20,000 votes, but the BJP had notable bagged over 13 per cent votes and come third.

The central BJP leadership today brought out a list of 194 candidates for the Bengal elections. So far, the party has announced candidates for 246 of the state's 294 seats.

Another actress - Locket Chatterjee - had featured in the BJP's second list, which was published last week. Locket will contest from Mayureswar in Birbhum.

Asked about the reason behind fielding Roopa from Howrah North, a central BJP leader said: "See, the logic is simple. Our party believes that Roopa is leadership material and can take the BJP forward in Bengal. So, we did not want to take the risk of putting her up from a tough seat like Bhowanipore, from where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is contesting. If Roopa loses, she will have to start rebuilding her credibility as a politician all over again."

Sidharth Nath Singh, the BJP's central co-minder for Bengal, said over phone from Delhi: "A celebrity like Roopa has a lot of crowd-pulling power. We believe she would put up a tough fight against Trinamul's cricketer nominee, who is new in politics. Moreover, her nomination will encourage our candidates for the four other seats in Howrah."

Roopa, who had breathed life into the party's campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections by vrooming around Calcutta on a motorbike, said a "lot of people" in her party had suggested her name. "There were 40-50 requests that I contest the elections," she said.

Asked about Shukla, she said: "All I have to say is contesting an election as a member of Trinamul at this point, given the law-and-order situation of our state, the recent scam and everything put together, I really doubt his intentions.... I wouldn't have been surprised if Laxmi had been just another politician, but someone who is from a different field altogether and has decided to stand by Mamata Banerjee now is really shocking. I am not saying this because I belong to a different party. But do you think a sane person can support Trinamul even after all this?"

Asked about his rival, Shukla said: "I have a good personal equation with her. Even on a cricket field, we always respect our opponents. Since Didi (Mamata Banerjee) has chosen me for Howrah North, I am contesting it."

BJP's national secretary and former state unit president Rahul Sinha has been fielded from Jorasanko in Calcutta. Trinamul's sitting MLA Smita Bakshi has been re-nominated for the seat.

The BJP sources said Roopa had earlier expressed her desire to contest the Jorasanko seat. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Sinha had got a lead of nearly 26,000 votes over Trinamul's Sudip Bandyopadhyay in the Jorasanko Assembly segment of the Calcutta North parliamentary seat. Sinha had lost.

BJP secretary Ritesh Tiwari will contest from Chowringhee. In an Assembly bypoll in 2014 in Chowringhee, he had come second to the Trinamul candidate, Sudip's wife Nayana. Nayana has been re-nominated.