Visakhapatnam: On Saturday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) approved the names of candidates for 23 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh . It indicates that BJP will not allow its former alliance partner, Telugu Desam (TDP) to have the last laugh.The BJP sources said that they would be fielding Valluru Jayaprakash Narayana and Dilip Kumar Kilaru from the prestigious Guntur and Vijayawada seats respectively.While Jayadev Galla of the TDP was the Lok Sabha member for Guntur, Kesineni “Nani” Srinivas, also of the TDP, was the member for Vijayawada. Both of them have been re-nominated by the TDP to defend their seats.The BJP had two members in the 16th Lok Sabha—Kambhampati Haribabu from Visakhapatnam and Gokaraju Ganga Raju from Narsapuram. Both of them refused to defend their seats, so the BJP nominated D. Purandeswari, a former Congress MP, for the Visakhapatnam seat, and Paidikonda Manikyala Rao, a BJP MLA from Tadepalligudem, for the Narsapuram seat. The party had approved the names of Purandeswari from Visakhapatnam and Kanna Lakshminarayana from the Narasaraopet seat earlier.Asked why Dr Haribabu had decided not to defend his seat, Adusumilli said that Haribabu felt he had delivered much more than promised to the port city.“It was during Haribabu’s tenure that Visakhapatnam was declared as a separate railway zone by the Prime Minister. The Centre also approved the setting up of several national institutions in the port city. Dr Haribabu thought that it was time for someone else to pick up the party baton, so he retired from electoral politics,” he said.“As the BJP promised, the party is contesting all the 25 Lok Sabha seats and the 175 state assembly seats in AP. We are sure to retain the two LS and four assembly seats that we won in 2014, but also hope to win additional seats in both the Lok Sabha and the assembly,” said Kesavakanth Adusumilli, president of the Visakhapatnam unit of the BJP. Adusumilli said that Purandeswari will fil her nomination papers on March 25.In north coast AP, the party has nominated KV Satyanarayana Reddy for the Araku (Scheduled Tribe) seat, Perla Sambamurti (Srikakulam), P Sanyasi Raju (Vizianagaram) and Gandi Venkata Satyanarayana (Anakapalli).The other BJP candidates announced on Saturday include: Yella Venkata Ramamohana Rao (Kakinada), Ayyaji Vema Manepalli (Amalapuram—Scheduled Caste), Satya Gopinath Dasparavasthu (Rajahmundry), Chinnam Ramakotaya (Eluru), Gudivaka Ramanjaneyulu (Machilipatnam), Challagali Kishore Kumar (Bapatla—SC), Thogunta Srinivas (Ongole), Adinarayana Inti (Nandyal), PV Parthasarthi, (Kurnool), Hamsa Devineni (Anantapur), Pogala Venkata Parthasarthi (Hindupur), Singa Reddy Ramachandra Reddy (Kadapa), Suresh Reddy Sannapareddy (Nellore), Bommi Srihari Rao (Tirupati—SC), Papireddy Maheswara Rao (Rajampet) and Jayaram Duggani (Chittoor—SC).

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