New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday declared its first list of 195 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections, with Bansuri Swaraj, the daughter of late former External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, getting the ticket from the New Delhi seat. Bansuri Swaraj will make her electoral debut in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. She had formally joined active politics in March 2023, when she was appointed as the co-convener of the BJP Delhi State Legal Cell. She said that she had been assisting the party in legal matters even before that.
The BJP announced the list of candidates even before the election dates were announced, hoping to gain a huge first-mover advantage in its quest to win 370 seats in the Lok Sabha. The list features the party’s top leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will seek re-election from Varanasi for the third time, and Home Minister Amit Shah, who will contest again from Gandhinagar in Gujarat.
Who Is Bansuri Swaraj?
Bansuri Swaraj is a lawyer with expertise in legal procedures. She completed her undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Warwick and her law degree from BPP Law School in London. She also became a Barrister at Law and obtained her Master of Studies from the University of Oxford.
In her professional career, Bansuri Swaraj has handled high-profile clients in complex litigation across various judicial platforms. She has resolved disputes related to contracts, real estate, tax, international commercial arbitrations, as well as several criminal trials.
Bansuri Swaraj has also been designated as the Additional Advocate General for the State of Haryana while maintaining her private practice.
Bansuri Swaraj grabbed the headlines last year when she slammed the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government over the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023. During a press conference in the national capital, she described the AAP government as “jhagdalu (quarrelsome) and nikammi (useless),” accusing them of being ineffective since 2015. She praised President Droupadi Murmu for passing the Bill, expressing confidence that the administration in Delhi would now function in accordance with the law.
Her mother, Sushma Swaraj, died at the age of 67 due to a cardiac arrest in 2019. She was the External Affairs Minister in the previous BJP-led government. She was also the first woman Chief Minister of Delhi for a short span in 1998.