New Delhi, Mar 21: The BJP on Thursday named its candidates for nine Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu, fielding former Telangana governor Tamilisai Soundararajan from Chennai South and party state unit chief K Annamalai from Coimbatore.

The party fielded former DMK leader and sitting MP T R Paarivendhar and Union Minister L Murugan from Perambalur and Nilgiris respectively.

Former Union minister Pon Radhakrishnan will contest from Kanniyakumari.

Vinoj P Selvam will contest from Chennai Central, A C Shanmugam from Vellore, C Narasimhan from Krishnagiri, and Nainar Nagendran from Thoothukkudi, the party said.

Polling in the state's 39 Lok Sabha seats will be held in the first phase on April 19.

The BJP did not win a single seat from Tamil Nadu in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

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Jammu (PTI): A portion of a small bridge collapsed in the Bantalab area on the outskirts of Jammu city on Friday, trapping at least three to four labourers under the debris, while one injured worker was rescued, official sources said.

Authorities have closed the road link following the collapse of the portion of the bridge.

The incident occurred when labourers were carrying out repair work on a retaining wall near the bridge that was damaged in last year's flash floods, the sources said.

According to the sources, a section of the bridge suddenly gave way, burying workers engaged at the site under the rubble.

Police, Army and State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) teams launched rescue operations to extricate those buried under the debris. They pulled out one injured labourer and shifted him to a hospital, the sources said.

Family members of the labourers present at the site said around six workers engaged at the site at the time of the incident came under the debris when the structure collapsed. The family members said while two of the labourers managed to escape, four got trapped.

The sources said those trapped included the husband of a woman labourer, a mason, an unmarried labourer and a relative of the contractor.

There was no official confirmation on the exact number of persons trapped under the debris till the filing of this report.

The rescue operations are ongoing.