The Congress’s Central Election Committee (CEC) met on Monday to discuss ticket allocation for the Haryana Assembly elections, with sources saying that 41 seats remain to be finalised. The party is likely to renominate a majority of its 28 sitting MLAs, according to sources in the CEC, and expects to release the names of all 90 candidates by Wednesday. It is learnt that the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, suggested that a “few Congress workers should also get tickets and not just established leaders”. A source in the CEC said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would take a call on whether to field MPs Randeep Singh Surjewala and Kumari Selja, While Surjewala is a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan, Selja won the recent Lok Sabha election from Sirsa. After the CEC meeting, All India Congress Committee’s (AICC) Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria said, “A list with 49 names was given by the screening committee for Haryana to the CEC. A total of 34 names have been cleared, while 15 are pending.” Babaria said a review committee would have a look at the 15 seats that the CEC had not finalised yet. The screening committee is likely to meet at 7 am on Tuesday and discuss the seats for the 41 constituencies for which it has not yet sent its recommendation to the CEC, which will reconvene on Tuesday evening. “The meeting of the CEC will continue tomorrow and the remaining 41 seats which are left will be discussed. We hope that by Wednesday, our list will be out. We will release all the names together,” Babaria said. Asked about the criteria for selection of candidates, the Congress leader said those with a “good image” were being given a chance apart from them having their names in the survey in a good position. “Those who have lost two elections will mostly not get tickets,” he said. Asked about sitting MPs being in the fray, he said: “I have not been told about them by the party high command.” On August 28, Babaria said the party would not allow its MPs to contest the elections. The remarks came after Selja and Surjewala expressed a desire to contest the polls. The following day, Babaria did a U-turn saying that “anyone who has the support of the MLAs and blessings of the party high command can be in contention for the chief minister’s post”.
