The Congress on Sunday announced a fresh list of Lok Sabha candidates, with nine from Andhra Pradesh and two from Jharkhand.
Of the two in Jharkhand, one is for the Ranchi Lok Sabha seat where former Union Minister Subodh Kant Sahay’s daughter Yashashwini has been fielded. On the other Jharkhand seat, Godda, the party changed its candidate, replacing MLA Deepika Singh Pandey with Pradeep Yadav.
Earlier in the day, the Congress’ central election committee met to discuss the party’s Lok Sabha candidates for Punjab and Bihar.
Though there is no official word on the meeting, sources indicated Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi had a separate one-on-one meeting to discuss some of the contentious seats.
Several names were discussed for both States, and a final decision on key seats has been left to the Congress president to take. The next list of candidates will be announced soon, the sources cited above added.
The Congress is contesting all the 13 seats in Punjab but in Bihar, it will field candidates for nine seats as the party is part of the mahagatbandhan (grand alliance) with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Left parties.
So far, the Congress has announced 294 candidates for the seven-phase Lok Sabha election that got under way on April 19.
