THE CONGRESS on Sunday fielded veteran leader and Rajya Sabha MP B K Hariprasad from Bangalore South, Tariq Anwar from Katihar and renominated P Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram from Sivaganga in Tamil Nadu as it released its ninth list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The party, however, remained silent on whether its president Rahul Gandhi would contest from a second seat — in South India.
Senior Congress leader P C Chacko said he believed that Rahul has so far not responded favourably to the demand for contesting from Wayanad seat in Kerala to anyone.
“I don’t think he has responded favourably to anyone regarding that demand. So it is a matter on which Rahul Gandhi has to take a decision. If anybody has said anything more than that, then I think it is not factual,” Chacko told reporters.
The AICC in charge of Delhi, who is a member of the Congress Working Committee, also hit out at the party leadership in Kerala over candidate selection. “Not just Wayanad, I don’t think the Congress leadership is going about with candidate selection in a mature way. There are two factions in Kerala and they merely divide seats among them….There are many experienced leaders in Kerala but they are not able to rise above narrow group (faction) interests. The Congress president has himself said about this many times,” he said.
Many in the party whom The Indian Express spoke to felt Gandhi contesting from a second seat would send a wrong signal. They felt it would also upend the party’s election efforts in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress has signalled that it would fight aggressively by introducing Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. It is to be seen whether the issue would come up in the CWC, which is meeting here Monday to finalise the party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections.
In its latest candidate list — of 10 candidates — the Congress fielded Subhash Wankhede from Hingoli seat in Maharasthra, held by AICC in charge of Gujarat Rajeev Satav. Interestingly, Satav had defeated Wankhede, who was then in the Shiv Sena, by a margin of over 1,600 votes in 2014.
AICC general secretary Mukul Wasnik also seems to have opted out of the race as the party fielded Kishor Uttamrao Gajbhiye from Ramtek reserved seat in Maharasthra. Wasnik, a former Union minister who is in charge of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, had lost from Ramtek in 2014.
The party also fielded Anwar, who recently joined the party from NCP, from his seat of Katihar. NCP supremo Sharad Pawar had asked the Congress leadership to give the seat to the NCP, arguing Anwar had won the seat last time on the NCP ticket.
Hariprasad became the sixth Rajya Sabha MP to be fielded by the Congress. The party has already given tickets to Rajya Sabha MPs Raj Babbar, Bhubaneswar Kalita, Digvijaya Singh, Sanjay Singh and Pradeep Tamta from various seats in Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.