New Delhi: With just six days left for the filing of nominations, Congress on Tuesday released its fourth list of 56 candidates, retaining 12 sitting MLAs while dropping eight others who are either party MLAs or independents.
So far, Congress has announced names for 151 of the 200 seats, by repeating 99 sitting MLAs while dropping 10 so far, while 21 are women. The Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC) is expected to clear the names for the remaining 49 seats soon.
The latest list showed that Vikas Chaudhary (Kishangarh) and Surendra Goyal (Jaitaran), who crossed over from the BJP, were fielded, as well as two independent MLAs Mahadev Singh (Khandela) and Kanti Prasad Meena (Thanagazi), who were supporting the Gehlot government. Of the 56, around 20 are new faces, while seven are women.
Congress national spokesperson Prof Gourav Vallabh has been fielded from Udaipur, which was represented by the BJP’s Ghulab Chand Kataria until recently before he resigned to become Governor. While BSP-turned-Congress MLA Sandeep Yadav was replaced with Imran Khan in Tijara, another BSP-turned-Congress lawmaker, Jogendra Awana, was fielded from Nadbai.
None of the three Gehlot loyalists accused of leading the rebellion in September last year and not allowing a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party—Shanti Dhariwal, Mahesh Joshi, and Dharmendra Rathore—find space in the third list either. There were reports that Dhariwal was seeking a ticket for his son.
The CEC, chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, discussed names for the remaining seats. The meeting was attended by former party chief Sonia Gandhi, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, state in-charge Sukhjinder Randhawa, and the party’s state unit chief Govind Dotasra, among others. Rahul Gandhi did not attend, as he was in Telangana campaigning.
Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal and Rajasthan Screening Committee chief Gaurav Gogoi also attended the party.
(Published 01 November 2023, 04:05 IST)