Manohar Joshi dropped; Maneka, Varun Gandhi, Jaya Prada fielded by BJP in LS polls
New Delhi, Mar 26: The BJP Tuesday dropped its former president Murli Manohar Joshi as its candidate from Kanpur for the Lok Sabha polls and swapped constituencies of Maneka Gandhi and her son Varun Gandhi as the party announced candidates for 39 more seats.
The BJP repeated Union minister Manoj Sinha from Ghazipur, his ministerial colleague Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti from Fatehpur and its Uttar Pradesh president Mahendra Nath Pandey from Chandauli.
UP government ministers Rita Bahuguna Joshi and Satyadev Pachauri have been fielded from prestigious from Allahabad and Kanpur seats respectively.
Its general secretary Arun Singh told reporters that the party has announced 29 candidates from UP and 10 from West Bengal. The BJP has so far announced its 349 nominees for the elections to the 543-member Lok Sabha.
Actor-turned-politician Jaya Prada was fielded from Rampur only hours after she joined the party and will take on her bitter rival Azam Khan, the Samajwadi Party candidate, in the general elections.
Joshi (85) joins the list of veterans, including L K Advani, Shanta Kumar, B C Khanduri and Kalraj Mishra, who have been denied the ticket by the BJP, apparently on the ground of their age and grooming younger leaders in their place.
The BJP had conveyed to Joshi that it will not field him in the polls.
The list also put to rest the speculation over the fate of Varun Gandhi, who was seen to be not in the good books of the party's leadership.
It is believed that Maneka Gandhi had asked the party leadership to field her son from Pilibhit, from where she has won a number of times and which is seen a relatively safe seat for her family.
Varun Gandhi had won from there once in 2009 and will now contest from there while his mother will fight from Sultanpur, which he had won in 2014.
The National Commission for Scheduled Castes Chairman Ram Shankar Katheria, who had won from Agra in 2014, has been fielded from Etawah, replacing Ashok Kumar Doharey.
The party has fielded its farmers' wing chief Virendra Singh 'Mast' from Ballia, replacing Bharat Singh. Mast had won from Bhadohi in 2014. Its Scheduled Castes' wing head Vinod Sonkar has been renominated from Kaushambi.
The BJP had won 28 of the 29 seats for which it announced its candidates on Tuesday. Names of seven incumbents did not figure on the list. However, two of them, Allahabad MP Shyama Charan Gupta and Bahraich MP Savitri Bai Phule, had quit the party.
In West Bengal, the party has given the ticket to Humayon Kabir, who had quit the Trinamool Congress last year, from Murshidabad.
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Real Madrid fines Valverde and Tchouaméni half a million euros each for altercation
Barcelona (AP): Real Madrid slapped players Federico Valverde and Aurélien Tchouaméni with half-a-million-euro ($588,000) fines on Friday for their altercation during practice.
The massive fines came a day after the midfielders tussled when the team trained. Valverde said in a post on social media on Thursday that no punches were thrown. But Valverde knocked his head on a table and he suffered a small cut that required a brief hospital visit.
On social media, Valverde initially called it a “meaningless fight” with a teammate and said “everything has been blown out of proportion."
His employers, however, considered it a significant enough breach of team discipline to nail both Valverde and Tchouaméni with fines that bite even the bank account of a top soccer player. The half-a-million euro penalties reflect the reputational damage the club was enduring in a chaotic end to a disappointing season.
In a statement, the 15-time European champion said its disciplinary action was concluded after both players expressed to the club “their complete remorse for what happened and apologized to one another.”
Madrid added they also apologized to their teammates, the coaching staff and club supporters, as well as showing their willingness to accept whatever disciplinary action the club deemed “opportune.”
Tchouaméni was back training with Madrid on Friday, two days before they play at Barcelona in a clasico. Madrid has to win otherwise Barcelona will be crowned La Liga champion.
After being notified of the fine, he posted a public apology to the club and its fans on social media.
“What happened this week in training is unacceptable,” Tchouaméni wrote. "I say this while thinking about the example we are expected to set for young people, whether in football or at school.
“Above all, I am sorry for the image we projected of the club.”
Valverde was not at practice due to the head knock.
Both players are set to play in the World Cup next month, with Tchouaméni playing for France and Valverde for Uruguay.
Chaotic end to a poor season
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The run-in between the players, who for seasons have played side by side in Madrid's midfield, came after they argued this week in previous training sessions. But tempers boiled over on Thursday. Spanish media was rife with reports that the players previously disagreed over the club's decision to let coach Xabi Alonso go after just months on the job.
It was not the only altercation involving Madrid players during training this week. Álvaro Carreras confirmed he was in a “minor” incident with a teammate. Spanish media said he and fellow defender Antonio Rüdiger got into a scuffle.
Álvaro Arbeloa, the coach who was promoted from Madrid's reserve team when Alonso was fired in January, will face tough questions on what went wrong inside the changing room when he gives a press conference on Saturday ahead of the clasico at Camp Nou.
Madrid is facing a second consecutive campaign without a major trophy amid rumors in the Spanish media that club president Florentino Pérez is considering bringing back Jose Mourinho to straighten out his underperforming team.
