NEW DELHI: The Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC) met on Monday to finalise candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, days after the party released its first list for the polls.
Discussions were taken up at the CEC meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge for parliamentary constituencies in Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh, among others.
Congress's #CentralElectionCommittee (#CEC) meets to pick candidates for #LokSabhaElections at the #Congress party headquarters in #NewDelhi today. pic.twitter.com/94TOuJQw2S
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The Congress had announced its first list of 39 candidates on Friday with Rahul Gandhi to contest from Kerala’s Wayanad again.
Besides Kharge, former Congress chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, Ambika Soni, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, T S Singhdeo and Mohammad Jawaid, among others, are members of the CEC. Sonia Gandhi was present at the meeting along with several other members. Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttarakhand Kumari Selja along with senior leaders from the hill state also participated in the discussions for selecting candidates for the five seats in the state.
During discussions on Rajasthan, Congress’ state unit chief Govind Singh Dotasra, AICC in-charge of state Sukhjinder Randhawa and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Sachin Pilot were present.
AICC’s Madhya Pradesh in-charge Jitendra Singh and state unit chief Jitu Patwari, among others, also participated in the discussions.
At the last CEC meet on Thursday, discussions were held on Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Sikkim, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Lakshwadeep.
According to the first list of candidates released by the party, former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel has been fielded from Rajnandgaon, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal from Alappuzha (Kerala) and Shashi Tharoor has been renominated from Thiruvananthapuram.
Source: Press Trust of India
