Lok Sabha Elections: Cong Top Brass Discusses Candidates For Polls In UP, Telangana. Suspense Remains On Amethi, Rae Bareli

Top leaders of the Congress, including Kharge and Sonia Gandhi, met in the national capital to hold discussions on the party's Lok Sabha election candidates in UP, Telangana, Goa, and Jharkhand. 

Top leaders of the Congress, including Kharge and Sonia Gandhi, met in the national capital to hold discussions on the party's Lok Sabha election candidates.

Source : PTI

Lok Sabha Elections: Top Congress leaders met in the national capital on Wednesday to hold discussions on party's Lok Sabha election candidates in Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Goa and Jharkhand. However, the final decision on the names for the key constituencies of Amethi and Rae Bareli was not taken.

The meeting saw the presence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Sonia Gandhi, party general secretary K C Venugopal and the members of its Central Election Committee (CEC), including senior leaders Ambika Soni, Madhusudan Mistry, Uttam Kumar Reddy and Salman Khurshid.

The candidates from six seats in Uttar Pradesh have been finalised, news agency PTI reported, citing sources. The grand old party has already announced candidates for nine seats in the state. On being questioned about Amethi and Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajai Rai said there was no discussion on the two seats. "We had conveyed our views on these seats (Amethi and Rae Bareli) the last time. It is up to the leadership now to take a decision," he said, as quoted by PTI.

After the CEC meeting last week, Rai had said, "We have given our proposal that members of the Gandhi family should contest from Amethi and Rae Bareli as it is the demand of the people there. Now, it is up to the party leadership to decide on it," as quoted by PTI. 

There are speculations that besides Wayanad in Kerala, Rahul Gandhi may also contest the Lok Sabha polls from Amethi, a seat he represented earlier, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rae Bareli, a seat that was previously held by her mother, Sonia Gandhi, as reported by PTI. 

Both seats are considered bastions of the Gandhi family and the local units of the grand old party have demanded that the two scions of the family should fight Lok Sabha polls from there. The Congress is in an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh and contesting 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The CEC meeting was held at the Congress headquarters in the national capital. The opposition party has already declared 194 candidates in several states and more names will be announced soon.