Lucknow, Jan 19 (IANS): The Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) has released a list of 24 candidates for the UP Assembly elections.

More than 80 per cent of the candidates are from the Nishad community. The list has three women candidates.

The party released the names of candidates for Assembly seats in Shamli, Jaunpur, Gorakhpur, Mirzapur, Pilibhit, Shahjahanpur, Bareilly, Badaun, Mainpuri, Agra, Ghazipur, Moradabad, Baghpat and Saharanpur, which will go to polls in the first and the second phase.

Party's national spokesperson Dev Jyoti said that the candidates were selected from the applications that the party had received online.

"Some of the seats had more than eight applications," he said.

This is for the first time that VIP will contest in UP. The party had asked the candidates to apply online on the party's website. "The candidates with a clean past were selected. There were no cases against them," said the party's spokesperson.