The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday released its first list of 67 candidates for the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections.

Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, who represents the Karnal constituency in the current Assembly, has been fielded from Ladwa, while former state home minister Anil Vij is the party’s candidate from the Ambala Cantonment seat.

Haryana will head for polling on October 5. The last date for filing of nomination is September 12. The counting of votes will take place on October 8, alongside Jammu and Kashmir.

The BJP has fielded its former Haryana unit president Om Prakash Dhankar from Badli. Former Lok Sabha MP Arvind Sharma will contest from Gohana.

Shruti Choudhry, former Congress Lok Sabha MP from Biwani and the granddaughter of ex-Chief Minister Bansi Lal, will contest from Toshan. Shruti Choudhry and her mother Kiran Choudhary joined the BJP in June. In August, Kiran Choudhary was given a Rajya Sabha seat on a BJP ticket.

Arti Singh Rao, the daughter of Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh, has been fielded from Ateli.

Among the 67 names announced by the party, nine are women. The Hindutva party has also announced candidates for the 13 reserved seats.

Earlier in the day, the Jannayak Janata Party and Azad Samaj Party alliance also released its first list of 19 candidates for the Assembly polls.

The alliance announced that Jannayak Janata Party president and former Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala will contest the elections from Uchana. The party general secretary Digvijay Chautala will fight from Dabwali.

In the 2019 Haryana polls, the BJP won 40 seats in the 90-member Assembly. Having fallen short of the majority mark, it had formed the government with the support of the Jannayak Janta Party. The Congress had won 31 seats.

Manohar Lal Khattar, who had been the state’s chief minister since October 2014, had retained his position and Chautala was made his deputy.

In March, weeks ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP replaced Khattar with Saini as the chief minister. The ties between the Hindutva party and the Jannayak Janta Party also snapped, leading to Chautala’s resignation.