As many 40 sitting BJP legislators, including six ministers, may face the axe in the coming the assembly elections. Although the first list of about 70 candidates will be released on Sunday, it is believed that in the next lists  new and fresh faces will be preferred.

This was discussed in the meeting of the State Core Committee held in Delhi on Saturday under the chairmanship of state election in-charge and Union minister Prakash Javadekar.

The Core Committee has decided the list of probable candidates, which was presented to BJP  President Amit Shah. The BJP Parliamentary Board on Sunday will approve the list.

The nomination process will start on Monday. The BJP’s first list will be released before it and it may include names of senior leaders including Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Rajendra Rathore, Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria and others.

Before the meeting of the Parliamentary Board, a meeting of the State Core Committee was held on Saturday at the residence of Union Minister Prakash Javadekar in Delhi.

The meeting was attended by National Vice-President Om Prakash Mathur, State President Madan Lal Saini, State Organisation General Secretary Chandra Sekhar, Convenor of State Election Management Committee and Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and other senior leaders. According to sources, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje presented her separate list in the meeting.

The names of the present legislators were included in the list of Raje. BJP’s central leadership wants to cut the ticket of 50 per cent of the current legislators.

While the chief minister is in favour of denying tickets to 15-20 per cent of the legislators. In the meeting of the core committee, the names of the candidates were discussed for two hours.

According to sources, there was an agreement to deny to tickets of about 40 MLAs in the core committee. After this meeting, CM Vasundhara Raje, Union Minister Javadekar and other leaders met Amit Shah for about an hour. Significantly, the BJP won 163 out of 200 seats in the last assembly elections.

There is a trend of change in government every five years in the state. To change this trend and to avoid anti-incumbency, BJP’s national president wants to give the opportunity to new faces instead of 50 per cent of the current legislators to reverse this trend of changing governments every five years.