Gaurav Gogoi, Vaibhav Gehlot and Nakul Nath in Congress second list
The Congress on Tuesday announced its second list of 43 Lok Sabha candidates across five States and one Union Territory, with party general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal stating that 76.7% of the candidates belonged to the Scheduled Castes (SC), the Scheduled Tribes (ST), the Other Backward Classes (OBC), and the minorities.
Deputy Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi will be fielded from a new seat in Upper Assam, Jorhat, as his existing seat of Kaliabor has been renamed Kaziranga after its boundaries were redrawn during a delimitation exercise by the Election Commission of India in 2023.
Jorhat is likely to witness a prestige battle as it is the hometown of the late Tarun Gogoi, Gaurav Gogoi’s father and a former Chief Minister. The BJP had won the seat both in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The seat is currently held by the BJP’s Tapan Gogoi, who has been renominat
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge with Sonia Gandhi, K.C. Venugopal and others during party’s Central Election Committee meeting in New Delhi.
ed. In Madhya Pradesh, Nakul Nath, son of former Chief Minister Kamal Nath, retained his Chhindwara seat, while former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son, Vaibhav Gehlot, has been fielded from Jalore. These names were cleared by the party’s Central Election Committee on Monday.
Rahul Kaswan, who switched over to the Congress from the BJP on Monday, has been fielded from Rajasthan’s Churu seat. Abdul Khaleque, sitting Congress MP from Barpeta in Assam, has been denied a ticket this time and Deep Bayan will fight the polls there.
In Monday’s meeting,
discussions were held for more than 60 seats, out of which 43 candidates were announced on Tuesday. Twelve of the seats are from Assam, 10 from Madhya Pradesh, 10 from Rajasthan, seven from Gujarat, three from Uttarakhand, and one from Daman and Diu, Mr. Venugopal said. Congress leaders Ajay Maken and Pawan Khera were also at the briefing.
Assam contest
Of the 14 seats in Assam, the Congress did not field any candidate for Lakhimpur and Dibrugarh, indicating that these seats could go its allies.
Former student leader
and chief of the Assam Jatiya Parishad, Lurinjyoti Gogoi, is said to be interested in taking on Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who has been fielded from the Dibrugarh Lok Sabha seat by the BJP.
In another interesting battle, the Congress has fielded the party’s deputy leader in the Assam Assembly, Rakibul Hussain, from Dhubri, a Muslim majority seat that has been electing Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, chief of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) since 2009.
In the 2021 Assembly elections, the Congress and AIUDF were allies but the two parties had a bitter falling out soon after.