Kochi, Feb 28 (IANS): The BJP is likely to field former bureaucrat K.J. Alphonse and former central minister O. Rajagopal in the Lok Sabha election, party sources said Friday.

The decision has been taken at a party meeting here, the sources told IANS. The names would be formally announced soon once the party's national leadership gives the green signal.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has never won a Lok Sabha seat in Kerala, which elects 20 members.

Rajagopal, 84, will contest this time too from Thiruvananthapuram, where he finished a close third in 2004 with V.S. Sivakumar of the Congress coming second.

In 2011, Alphonse, after finishing a five-year stint as an independent legislator of the Left Democratic Front, did not seek re-election and instead joined the BJP.

Alphonse is being considered for the Kottayam or Pathanamthitta seat, the sources said.

The other likely BJP candidates will be C.K. Padmanabhan, P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, P.K. Krishna Das, K. Surendran, Shoba Surendran, A.N. Radhakrishnan and A.T. Ramesh.