Panaji, Mar 19 (TOI): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sent only the names of Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte for Shiroda and Mandrem bypolls scheduled for April 23.

Both Sopte and Shirodkar who were elected in February 2017 assembly polls on Congress ticket joined BJP in October 2018. Sopte had defeated then Chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar by over 7,000 votes. Shirodkar had defeated BJP minister Mahadev Naik who has since joined the Congress.

For the Mandrem seat, Parsekar has now decided not to contest, months after threatening to jump in the fray “on the request of his workers”.

For the Mapusa seat, however, there are three probables, councillors Sudhir Kandolkar and Joshua D’Souza who is the son of former deputy chief minister Francis D’Souza. The third is Rupesh Kamat who works in the CM’s office.

State BJP president Vinay Tendulkar said that as they were busy on Monday (with regard to the government formation), the names would be emailed to Delhi, where the matter would be discussed by the central election committee (CEC).

“The CEC will take a call on finalising the Mapusa candidate,” a BJP office bearer said. BJP is unable to make up its mind on Mapusa as both Kandolkar and D’Souza have started work in the constituency.

For the two Lok Sabha polls, union Ayush minister Shripad Naik and Narendra Sawaikar are nominated.