The central election committee (CEC) of the Congress is learnt to have cleared the names of 12 candidates from Maharashtra for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Those finalised include, Praniti Shinde, daughter of former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. Praniti is likely to be fielded from the Solapur seat.
The party is yet to announce its formal seat-sharing formula with its Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners- the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party. The MVA parties are scheduled to meet on March 21 following which the third list of the Congress will be released, sources said.
Maharashtra has 48 Lok Sabha seats. In 2019, the NDA (including un-divided Shiv Sena) won 41 of the 48 seats of Maharashtra. The NCP won four seats while the Congress could won one seat.
In the two lists, the Congress has so far announced candidates for 82 Lok Sabha seats of the total 543 seats. In its first list on March 8, the Congress released names of 39 candidates, which included Rahul Gandhi, DK Suresh and Shashi Tharoor. The party’s second list released on March 12 had 43 names including Gaurav Gogoi, Nakul Nath and Vaibhav Gehlot.
In its two lists released so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced names of 267 candidates of which two have opted out.
The seven-phase Lok Sabha polls begins on April 19. The results will be declared on June 4. The nominations for the first phase have begun since Wednesday.
The Wednesday meeting also cleared names of seven candidates each for Gujarat and Rajasthan. Reports suggested that Paresh Dhanaji, former Leader of Opposition in the Gujarat Assembly could be fielded from the Rajkot Lok Sabha seat in Gujarat. The party is contesting the Lok Sabha polls in Rajkot in alliance with the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.
Similarly in Rajasthan, Sunil Sharma’s will contest from Jaipur city seat while Kuldeep Indira would be fielded from Ganganagar seat, as per the CEC decisions.
The CEC is meeting on March 21 again to discuss candidates for the Lok Sabha seats from Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. These states will vote in the first phase of election on April 19.
