Turncoats figured prominently in the eighth list of 11 candidates released by the BJP late on Saturday evening that saw actor Sunny Deol dropped from the Gurdaspur seat in Punjab.

Deol had not spoken even once in Parliament in his entire five-year term as a Lok Sabha member and it was widely expected he would be dropped. A former MLA Dinesh Singh alias Babbu replaced Deol in Gurdaspur.

Sitting MPs of the Congress, the AAP and the BJD who had defected to the BJP recently were rewarded with party tickets, buttressing the fact that the ruling party lacked credible faces and that “Modi ki guarantee” may not guarantee victory.

Bhartruhari Mahtab was fielded from Cuttack in Odisha, a seat he had represented as a BJD member for several terms. Mahtab had joined the BJP recently after alliance talks with the BJD fell through.

Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and the lone AAP MP Sushil Kumar Rinku, who defected to the BJP early this week, were fielded from Ludhiana and Jalandhar seats in Punjab, respectively.

Similarly, Preneet Kaur — another turncoat and wife of former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh — was made a candidate from Patiala, the seat she represented in the outgoing 17th Lok Sabha as a Congress member.

Former ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, was fielded from the key Amritsar constituency.

Punjabi folk singer Hans Raj Hans, who was dropped from the North West Delhi seat, will now contest from the reserved Faridkot seat.