New Delhi One in every four candidates (of the 250 announced till Tuesday evening) of the Congress in the coming Lok Sabha elections is from a political family, compared to one in every five (of the 424 announced) by the Bharatiya Janata Party, highlighting the multigenerational aspect of politics across parties.

Thus far, 87 of the 424 candidates named by the BJP are from political families as against 65 of the 250 named by the Congress. For the purpose of this analysis, HT defined a political family as one where either a grandparent, parent, or elder sibling was or is an elected or nominated member of Parliament or a state assembly, or held a key post in a political party. The list includes some recognisable scions of political families, but it also includes those from families that are not so well known, at least outside the respective party circle.

To be sure, given the churn in politics, not all those from political families contesting these elections are doing so for the same party as their elders. The presence of a large number of people from political families in the BJP’s list does not surprise analysts for two reasons. One, the party has always focused on what it calls winnability. Two, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi clarified in Parliament that there is nothing wrong with candidates who choose to follow in their elders’ footsteps. He said that the BJP was simply opposed political power being centered around a single family. The BJP has repeatedly held up the Congress, the DMK, even the TMC and the Samajwadi Party as examples of what it terms dynastic rule.

This time, the BJP’s candidate list includes D Purandeshwari from Andhra Pradesh, who is the daughter of Telegu Desam Party founder NT Rama Rao. She used to be in the Congress as was Kiran Kumar Reddy (he was CM once) who is also a BJP candidate. His father was a Congressman and a close aide of Indira Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao.

The BJP also has candidates who are from political families that have been opposed to the Congress. One of its candidates in Bihar is the son of former MP from Bettiah, Madan Kumar Jaiswal. Vivek Thakur, who is contesting from Newada, is the son of former Union minister CP Thakur. And in Gujarat, the BJP has given a ticket to Poonamben Madaam who is the daughter of six-term MLA and former mayor Hemantibhai Madaam. Another veteran candidate from the state is Bharatsinhh Dabhi who is the son of two-term MLA Shankarji Okhaji Thakor.

Among the high-profile candidates of the BJP from political families are the late Sushma Swaraj’s daughter Bansuri Swaraj in New Delhi, BS Yedyurappa’s son BY Raghavendra (the sitting MP from Shimoga, who has been refielded) , and former chief minister Basavaraj Bommai, the son of SR Bommai.

The Congress has fielded 14 candidates from prominent political families including Mallikarjun Kharge’s son in law Radhakrishna Doddamani, Ramalinga Reddy’s daughter Soumya Reddy, and SS Mallikarjun’s wife Prabha Mallikarjun .

The candidates themselves say it is unfair to target them just because they are from political families, and point out that winning an election gives them legitimacy.

“I have been a district president, I was a youth leader in 1990, general secretary of Champaran and secretary of medical council of the party. I started from scratch, but Tejashwi Yadav started from being president from the word go. How can you compare us?” said Jaiswal when asked to comment about the BJP’s growing political families.

Political scientist Rahul Verma who did his doctoral dissertation on political families said the trend of candidates from political families has only gone up. “While the share of such members in BJP is increasing with time, it’s still likely to be higher in the Congress for the forseeable future,’’ said Verma. He added that the BJP has managed to target dynastic politics by drawing a distinction between the political families that have been with it, as compared to entire parties built around one family.

(With inputs by Akshita Kumari, Aman Aryan)