New Delhi, Jan. 29 : Bharatiya Janata Party's Central Election Committee on Thursday decided to contest youth icon Jaspal Rana from Uttarakhand's Tehri constituency in the forthcoming General Elections.

BJP declared ace shooter and Asian Games gold medallist Rana's name for the Lok Sabha polls in the list of 23 candidates announced here on Thursday. He will be one of the four candidates declared from Uttarakhand.

Rana's sister happens to be BJP President Rajnath Singh's daughter-in-law.

The other candidates from Uttarakhand are former Union Minister of State Bacchi Singh Rawat (Uddhamsingh Nagar), Ajay Tamta (Almora-SC) and Madan Kaushik
(Hardwar).

Besides, BJP's central committee also finalised names of 17 candidates from West Bengal, including former CPM MP Bratin Sengupta from Barasat, Satya Brata Mookherjee (Krishnanagar), Subhas Chandra Burman (Balurghat), Tathagata Roy (Kolkata North), Rahul Sinha (Bankura), Dipen Pramanik (Jalpaiguri-SC) and Nabendu Mahali (Jhargram-ST).

Other candidates included Prabhakar Tiwari (Barrackpore), former IPS officer Dawa Sherpa (Darjeeling), Rahul Chakrabarty (Uluberia), Swapan Kumar Das (Basirhat), Debabrata Choudhary (Sreerampur), Amalesh Mishra (Kanthi), Rajshree Choudhary (Tamluk), Mahitosh Bauri (Bardhaman Eas t), Bhabendra Nath Burman (Cooch Behar-SC) and Polly Mukherjee (Howrah).

Narendra Sawaikar will contest from Murmugao (Goa) while B P Ray is the BJP candidate from Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Moreover, the Bharatiya Janata Party also announced the candidature of Tapan Ghosh for the bye-election to West Bengal assembly constituency of Bishnupur West.

With the latest list of election candidates for contesting LS elections, the total number of candidates announced by BJP has risen to 75. (ANI)