My good fortune to serve Gautam Buddh Nagar once again: BJP's Mahesh Sharma on LS ticket

BJP veteran Mahesh Sharma on Saturday said that it was his good fortune to be able to serve Gautam Buddh Nagar once again as a public representative.

Sharma's remarks came shortly after the BJP announced his name from the Gautam Buddh Nagar constituency for the Lok Sabha elections.

This is the fourth time that the party has named Sharma as its Gautam Buddh Nagar candidate.

''My heartfelt thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party national president JP Nadda, Home Minister Amit Shah and the top leadership for once again making me the Gautam Buddh Nagar Lok Sabha constituency candidate of the world's largest political party BJP,'' Sharma posted on X in Hindi.

''It is my good fortune that I am elected as a public representative from Gautam Buddha Nagar Lok Sabha seat of Uttar Pradesh, the largest state of the country, to take forward the dreams, aspirations and hopes of a new and developed India under the energetic and visionary leadership of the prime minister,'' he added.

Sharma won the Lok Sabha polls from Gautam Buddh Nagar first in 2014 and then again in 2019. He first contested the Lok Sabha elections in 2009 which he lost. He was then fielded by the BJP in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls from the Noida seat, which he won but later vacated in 2014 to go to the Parliament.

64-year-old Sharma was in 2023 made the BJP's in-charge for the assembly polls in Tripura. The BJP won a majority in the polls. He served as minister of state for culture and civil aviation during the first term of the Narendra Modi government but not given any ministerial berth in the second term. The dates for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls are yet to be announced.