BJP releases list of UP star campaigners; names of Varun Gandhi, LK Advani, Vinay Katiyar missing

New Delhi: With the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh all set to kickstart come this February, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday released a list of tar campaigners of the party. 

Surprisingly, names of party MP Varun Gandhi, veteran party leader LK Advani and its former Uttar Pradesh unit president Vinay Katiyar are missing in the list. 

Murli Manohar Joshi, who is a Lok Sabha member from the state, also did not find a place in the list. 

The 40 star campaigner list included names of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Hom Minister Rajnath Singh, BJP president Amit Shah, Union Water Resource Minister Uma Bharti, BJP MP Yogi Adityanath and Kalraj Mishra. 

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar's name was also not included in the list.

Varun Gandhi's has enjoyed uneven relation with the party leadership while Katiyar, a key leader during the Ram temple movement, has been at the margins of state politics for long after once heading the party.

The other names include Union Ministers Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Smriti Irani, Nitin Gadkari, Piyush Goyal, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Mahesh Sharma, LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan, a BJP ally, Hema Malini and V K Singh.

The seven-phase Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls will be held on February 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, March 4 and 8.