The passing away of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has further delayed the announcement of BJP’s first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha polls on Sunday.

Earlier in the day, the party declared the names of its candidates for most of the seats in Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh Assemblies, which will go the polls along with the Lok Sabha elections on April 11.

There were expectations that the list of Lok Sabha candidate for the first phase of polls on April 11 would be announced late in the evening, but it had to be shelved after news broke out of Parrikar’s death. Several senior BJP leaders who are members of Central Election committee are flying to Panjim to attend Parrikar’s last rites.

The party has named its candidates for 123 seats in the 175-member Andhra Pradesh Assembly and for 54 seats in the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly, according to a statement.

Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu has been fielded from Mukto constituency.

In Andhra Pradesh, the two main challengers for power are Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP and Jaganmohan Reddy-led YSR Congress with the BJP hoping to improve its tally.

The BJP came to power in Arunachal Pradesh after a majority of Congress MLAs deserted the party to ally with it and later joined it.

Meanwhile, the three NDA constituents in Bihar — BJP, JD(U) and LJP — on Sunday announced the names of candidates for the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies for the coming general elections.

As per the announcement made at a joint Press conference of the three parties in Patna, the BJP and the JD (U) will contest 17 seats each and the LJP in six.

According to the announcement, the BJP will contest from Bettiah, Purvi Champaran (Motihari), Muzaffarpur, Saran, Maharjaganj, Sheohar, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Ujiarpur, Begusarai, Patna Sahib, Pataliputra, Ara, Buxar, Sasaram, Aurangabad and Araria.