Noida/Ghaziabad: The BJP on Monday announced its candidates for six assembly constituencies in Ghaziabad and Gautam Budh Nagar districts while keeping a suspense in Noida and Sahibabad seats where the names of two candidates are doing the rounds — Vimla Batham and Pankaj Singh respectively. While Vimla Batham is the sitting MLA from Noida, Pankaj Singh is the son of Union home minister Rajnath Singh.The party's central election committee released a list of 149 names for the UP polls on Monday. The list contained the names of candidates for Loni, Ghaziabad, Muradnagar and Modinagar of Ghaziabad apart from Dadri and Jewar of Gautam Budh Nagar.Congress turncoat Thakur Dhirendra Singh, who had joined BJP on January 8, has been given a ticket from Jewar assembly seat of Gautam Budh Nagar district. Singh, who is from Rabupura village and was reportedly close to Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, joined BJP after spending nearly three decades with Congress. Singh had shot to limelight during the land acquisition crisis in Bhatta Parsaul in 2011 when Gandhi rode pillion on his motorcycle to reach the strife-torn villages that had been barred from entry by the police and administration. He had contested the 2012 assembly polls from Jewar on a Congress ticket but lost to BSP's Vedram Bhati by a margin of 9,500 votes.In Muradnagar in Ghaziabad, the BJP again fielded a Congress turncoat, Ajit Pal Tyagi (44), who had joined the BJP in December last year. The party has dumped Brijpal Teotia, who was its candidate in the 2012 assembly polls. Tyagi was with Congress for nearly two years and was party general secretary in UP. His father, Rajpal Tyagi, had been a six-time MLA from Muradnagar having won the seat twice as an Independent and twice on Congress ticket and one time each on SP and BSP tickets.Tejpal Nagar, BJP's Dadri candidate, is the principal of Sant Vinoba Bhave Inter College in Greater Noida. Nagar, who had joined the BSP in 2007, had quit the party in 2014 and joined the BJP. Nagar will be contesting an assembly poll for the first time.The party has fielded Dr Manju Shiwach, the only woman candidate from among the six candidates for the two districts declared so far, from the Modinagar assembly constituency of Ghaziabad.Shiwach is a Modi Nagar-based gynaecologist, who runs a private hospital in the township along with her husband Dr Devendra Siwach, a laparoscopic surgeon, who is also a BJP worker.She will be contesting an assembly election for the first time after unsuccessfully running for the post of Modinagar municipality chairman on a BJP ticket in 2012.From the Ghaziabad assembly constituency, the BJP has repeated Atul Garg, a city-based trader, who had been fielded by the party in the 2012 assembly polls.Garg (59), whose father Dinesh Chandra Garg, was the mayor of Ghaziabad from 1995 to 2005, had lost the 2012 polls to BSP's Suresh Bansal by a margin of nearly 13,000 votes. His family has been associated with the BJP for the past several decades.From Loni, the party has fielded Nand Kishore Gujjar, who will also be contesting an assembly election for the first time in his political career. Gujjar had been elected as the Ghaziabad district president of BJP in 2014.

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