The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday announced that it was fielding its sitting Ghaziabad MLA Atul Garg as its candidate for the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat, dropping sitting MP and former chief of army staff General VK Singh (retired).
Other major parties, including the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), are yet to announce their candidates for the Ghaziabad parliamentary constituency.
The Ghaziabad constituency will go to polls on April 26. The results are set to be declared June 4.
Garg’s name was in the BJP’s fifth list of Lok Sabha candidates released late Sunday night after the party’s central election committee decided on the names for the upcoming general elections. BJP leaders said this was the first time since 2009 that the party had fielded a local candidate for the seat.
Garg, the son of the former mayor late Dinesh Chand Garg, is from the Vaish community and has a business background. He first won the Ghaziabad assembly segment during the 2017 assembly election by defeating the late Suresh Bansal of the BSP by a margin of 70,505 votes. He became a minister in the state government. In the 2022 assembly elections when the BJP won and retained all five assembly seats in Ghaziabad, Garg, then the state minister for health, won by a margin of 105,537 votes against his nearest rival, Vishal Verma of the Samajwadi Party.
QUOTE FROM GARG
“We are thankful to the party leadership for giving a ticket to Atul Garg who is a local candidate from Ghaziabad. The party carried out internal surveys and also held a discussion with the people before deciding on the candidate. Finally, the name of Atul Garg was announced and it was cheered by party workers,” said Sanjeev Sharma, the BJP’s city president.
In 2009, the BJP had fielded Rajnath Singh, the current defence minister, for the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha seat, and in 2014 and 2019 it fielded General Singh, who won by record margins.
Outgoing MP Gen VK Singh is the union minister of state for road transport and highways and civil aviation. In a tweet late Sunday evening, he said, “With these feelings, I have made a difficult, but thoughtful decision. I will not contest the 2024 elections. This decision was not easy for me, but I have taken it from the bottom of my heart. I want to take my energy and time in new directions, where I can serve my country in a different way.”
He added, “Going forward, I will continue my service towards the country and all the citizens, just in a new form.”
Gen Singh won two consecutive Lok Sabha elections from Ghaziabad in 2014 and 2019. In 2014, he contested his first election in 2014 from Ghaziabad and won by a record margin of 567260 votes by defeating Congress’ Raj Babbar.
In 2019, he won by a record margin of 501,500 votes against (late) Suresh Bansal who contested from the Bahujan Samaj Party.