New Delhi, March 11 -- The senior leadership of the Congress party on Monday deliberated over more than 60 seats across five states - Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam, finalising approximately 40 candidates for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The party has reportedly chosen to re-nominate Nakul Nath, son of former Chief Minister Kamal Nath, from Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, and Vaibhav, son of Ashok Gehlot, from Jalore in Rajasthan. There had been rumours about Kamal Nath and his son Nakul defecting to the BJP before the elections.

It is unlikely that Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot will stand for election, with Gehlot's son entering the electoral race and Pilot taking on the role of AICC General Secretary for Chhattisgarh.

The Congress' Central Election Committee (CEC), led by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, convened at the party headquarters to finalise the candidates. This meeting took place a few days after the party announced its first list of 39 candidates.

The meeting discussed 14 seats each from Rajasthan, Assam and Gujarat, 16 from Madhya Pradesh, five from Uttarakhand, and one from the Union Territory of Daman and Diu.

In Rajasthan, around 10 candidates were finalised, including Rahul Kaswan (who recently left the BJP to join Congress) from Churu, Vaibhav Gehlot from Jalore, and Harish Meena from Tonk-Sawai Madhopur.

The CEC meeting began with discussions on the five parliamentary constituencies in Uttarakhand. The CEC was attended by several prominent figures, including former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Ambika Soni, T S Singhdeo, P L Punia, and Mohammad Jawaid. Rahul Gandhi, although in Delhi, did not attend the meeting.

Rahul Gandhi was listed as a candidate from Wayanad in Kerala in the first list of 39 candidates announced on Friday.

At Monday's meeting, Congress General Secretary in charge of Uttarakhand, Kumari Selja, and other senior leaders from the state participated in discussions to select candidates for the state's five seats.

During the Rajasthan discussions, Congress' state unit chief Govind Singh Dotasra, AICC in-charge of the state Sukhjinder Randhawa, and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Pilot were present. AICC's Madhya Pradesh in-charge Jitendra Singh and state unit chief Jitu Patwari, among others, also participated in the discussions. The previous CEC meeting on Thursday discussed Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Sikkim, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Lakshadweep. According to the party's first list of candidates, former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel will contest from Rajnandgaon, AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal from Alappuzha in Kerala, and Shashi Tharoor has been re-nominated from Thiruvananthapuram. With agency input

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.