Congress leadership to meet today to finalise its Lok Sabha candidates

The Congress leadership is all set to finalise the names of party candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections when they meet in the national capital on Thursday.

“The first meeting of the Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC) that considers and decides on candidates for Lok Sabha polls is being held at 6 pm on March 7th,” AICC general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh said in a post on microblogging site X.

Top leaders, including party president Mallikarjun Kharge and former chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, will be present at the meeting, besides other senior leaders who are part of the panel.

The main Opposition party and the key constituent of the INDIA bloc is yet to announce its candidates for the Lok Sabha elections. Last week, the BJP, came out with its first list of 195 candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.

Meanwhile, speculations started doing the rounds of political circles after the party’s Amethi district president Pradeep Singhal claimed that Rahul Gandhi’s name would be announced soon as the candidate from Amethi, a constituency he represented in the Lok Sabha several times since 2002 but lost to BJP’s Smriti Irani in the last elections in 2019 and shifted to Waynad in Kerala.

Amethi will continue to be keenly watched in any case — if Rahul Gandhi switches over from Waynad to his former constituency or who replaces him. Both Amethi and the neighbouring Rae Bareli seats are considered to be traditional strongholds of the Gandhi family and speculation is also rife about Priyanka Gandhi Vadra making her electoral debut from here as Sonia Gandhi has vacated the seat and shifted to the Rajya Sabha. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress could muster the solitary victory from Rae Bareli.

Sitting MP from Amethi Smriti Irani on Wednesday said the delay on the part of the Congress in announcing the name of its candidate from Amethi itself was a sign of defeat for the party.