The Congress will release its first list of candidates for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly election on Sunday, the party’s general secretary in-charge of the State, Randeep Surjewala, said on Friday.
He was speaking after a meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) in Delhi, the second in a week to discuss candidate selection in the State. M.P. Congress president Kamal Nath said that discussions were held on about 60 seats during the meeting, which was attended by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, and MP Rahul Gandhi, among others. After the CEC’s October 7 meet, Mr. Nath had said that deliberations had been held on candidates for 130 to 140 seats.
Elections for 230 Assembly constituencies in the State will be held on November 17. The last date to file a nomination is October 30.
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‘Full majority’
After the CEC meeting, Mr. Kharge took to social media platform X and said that the youth, women, Dalits, tribals, and backward classes of the State would get justice in a few days. “There will be a complete stop to the BJP’s injustice, atrocities and corrupt mis-governance of the last 18 years,” he wrote.
Mr. Kharge slammed the ruling party for the events of March 2020 when several Congress MLAs, led by MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, had resigned, resulting in the fall of the Kamal Nath government. “This time the public will not allow the formation of an undemocratic BJP government in Madhya Pradesh through the back door. This time the traitors will get a befitting reply. Congress party is moving towards full majority,” the Congress chief said.
Mr. Nath said that another round of discussions would be held after the State unit’s screening committee goes through the names. “We will finalise the list after that. We will announce our list after Shradh and are moving at that pace so that we can announce our list on October 15,” he said.
Terming the discussions as positive, Mr. Surjewala said, “The way Mr. Nath is coordinating [the meetings], it shows that Congress is moving towards victory in M.P.”
CM candidates
The BJP has already named its candidates for 136 seats in the State, with its first list of 39 seats issued as early as on August 17. Names for the remaining seats are expected to be declared during the Navratri festival, which begins on Sunday.
The Congress is going to the polls with Mr. Nath as its Chief Ministerial candidate, while the BJP has not yet announced whether the incumbent Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who has held the post for 18 years, will be its candidate; instead, it has decided that the face of its campaign in the State will be Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
