Guwahati/New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has been appointed chairperson of the screening committee tasked with selecting candidates for the upcoming Assam Assembly elections, as the party prepares for polls scheduled in the first half of the year.
The decision was announced late Saturday night by K C Venugopal, general secretary (organisation) of the All India Congress Committee. In a statement, the party said four-member screening committees had been constituted for Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to finalise candidate lists for the forthcoming Assembly elections.
Vadra, who is also an AICC general secretary and a Member of Parliament, will lead the Assam committee at a time when the Congress is seeking to contest the election in alliance with several opposition parties to dislodge the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Her close associates Imran Masood and Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, both Lok Sabha MPs, along with Sirivella Prasad, have been named as members of the Assam screening committee.
For Kerala, the party has appointed senior leader Madhusudan Mistry as chairperson of the screening panel. Former Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister T S Singh Deo will head the committee overseeing candidate selection for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. In West Bengal, the screening committee will be chaired by B K Hariprasad, with Mohammad Jawed, Mamata Devi and B P Singh serving as members.
The Kerala panel will include Rajya Sabha MPs Syed Naseer Hussain and Neeraj Dangi, along with Abhishek Dutt. Yashomati Thakur, G C Chandrashekhar and Anil Kumar Yadav have been named as members of the screening committee for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
According to the statement, general secretaries or in-charges, Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, Congress Legislature Party leaders, and AICC secretaries attached to the respective state in-charges will serve as ex-officio members of the screening committees in their states.
Assembly elections in Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam are expected over the next few months. The 126-member Assam Assembly is likely to go to the polls in March and April.
Last month, the Congress joined hands with CPI(M), Raijor Dal, Assam Jatiya Parishad, CPI, CPI(ML) Liberation, Jatiya Dal Asom and the Karbi Anglong-based All Party Hill Leaders Conference to contest the Assam elections from a common platform. At present, the BJP holds 64 seats in the Assam Assembly, while its allies include the Asom Gana Parishad with nine MLAs, United People’s Party Liberal with seven and Bodoland People’s Front with three. In the opposition, the Congress has 26 MLAs, AIUDF has 15, CPI(M) has one, and there is one Independent legislator.