Congress To Declare Candidates For Remaining 18 Lok Sabha Seats In MP On Tuesday: Party Functionary

MP has 29 Lok Sabha seats, and ithe BJP has already nominated candidates for all constituencies. Meanwhile, Congress has only unveiled 10 names thus far, leaving 18 candidates yet to be finalised.

New Delhi: The Congress party in Madhya Pradesh is gearing up for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, with plans to declare its candidates for the remaining 18 seats in the state on Tuesday. A senior party functionary said on Monday that the Central Election Committee (CEC) will convene to finalise the third list of nominees for the April-May polls. Notably, The grand old party has left one seat, Khajuraho, bordering Uttar Pradesh, for its I.N.D.I.A. bloc partner Samajwadi Party which is yet to announce its candidate for the constituency.

Madhya Pradesh has 29 Lok Sabha seats, and the BJP has already nominated candidates for all constituencies. Meanwhile, Congress has only unveiled 10 names thus far, leaving 18 candidates yet to be finalised. To address this, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge is slated to preside over a Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting on Tuesday in New Delhi. This meeting aims to make the final decisions regarding the remaining Lok Sabha seats in Madhya Pradesh, as confirmed by KK Mishra, the party's state unit media cell chief, to PTI.

According to Mishra, the screening committee has already submitted the candidates' names to the party's poll panel. He expressed confidence that the remaining candidates would be nominated by the party on Tuesday, pointing out that their leader Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Nyay Yatra has concluded. He firmly dismissed any speculation suggesting that senior Congress leaders in Madhya Pradesh were hesitant to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls due to the party's underwhelming performance in the assembly elections held in November last year.

No Dearth Of Leaders In Congress's MP Unit: KK Mishra 

Mishra alleged the BJP was behind the creation of such a perception of the Congress. "There is no dearth of leaders in the Madhya Pradesh Congress. These are accusations of the BJP which itself has run out of leaders. And that is why they are buying our leaders", he alleged.

According to another senior leader of the Congress, the party is likely to give tickets to three to four women candidates. No woman was named in the list of 10 candidates announced for the state by the Congress last week, as per PTI.

The Congress has released two lists of candidates, totaling 82 names, for various states in preparation for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Meanwhile, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has announced its intention to declare its candidate for the Khajuraho Lok Sabha seat, scheduled for voting on April 26, sometime this week. "We are going to nominate our candidate for Khajuraho in the next three to four days", SP national spokesman Yash Bhartiya said.

Madhya Pradesh is scheduled in four phases spanning from April 19 to May 13. In the 2019 general elections, the BJP secured a sweeping victory, clinching 28 out of the 29 seats in the state.

The lone seat retained by the Congress was Chhindwara, the stronghold of party stalwart Kamal Nath. Notably, Nath's son, Nakul Nath, emerged victorious from this constituency. In the upcoming elections, Nakul Nath has been nominated again as the Congress candidate from Chhindwara.