The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) released its first candidate list on Saturday. In the first list, the saffron party has fielded Manoj Tiwari for the third time as its candidate for the North East Delhi constituency.
The first announced list consists of 195 candidates. When BJP revoked the tickets of four sitting MPs, the saffron party expressed their confidence in Tiwari by fielding him for the third time by fielding him in the same constituency.
Tiwari, born in Varanasi, apart from being a politician is also a singer and an actor. He contested the election in 2009 as the Samajwadi party candidate from Gorakhpur Lok Sabha but was defeated by Yogi Adityanath. Later, after joining BJP, he contested the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections and won the seat.
Tiwari was appointed as the Delhi BJP President in 2016. His political career grew eventually. Tiwari was the head of the BJP organization in Delhi when the party swept record victory in the 2017 Municipal Cooperation elections.
In the 2019 election, Tiwari won by defeating Sheila Dikshit, the Indian National Congress candidate in North East Delhi by a margin of 3.63 lakh votes.
Before joining politics, he focused on his career being a singer and an actor in the Bhojpuri film industry. In 2003, he took the role in the film Sasura Bada Pasiawala. In 2010, Tiwari also took part in the fourth season of reality television show Big Boss.
When the Delhi government decided to stop the production, storage, sale, and use of all types of firecrackers to reduce the rising level of pollution in Delhi, Tiwari moved to the Supreme Court citing that freedom of religion cannot be taken away from the pretext of the right to life. But the Supreme Court refused to hear the petition and dismissed the plea stating that “Let People breathe clean Air First” and also added that the public could use the money to buy sweets instead of crackers.