The Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC), on Thursday, released the second list of 71 candidates, which includes the controversial names of former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal from Chandigarh and former Union minister Subodh Kant Sahay from Ranchi.
While Bansal had resigned after a railway bribery scandal , Sahay had quit following the coal block allocation scam. Despite party leaders like Manish Tewari, who was eyeing Chandigarh seat, targeting Bansal publicly, stating "tainted candidates" should not be fielded, the party backed the former Railway minister to the hilt. Other prominent names include film stars Nagma from Meerut and Raj Babbar from Ghaziabad, Union ministers Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram and Veerappa Moily from Chikballapur.
The list includes eight Youth Congress (YC) members, including YC President Rajeev Satav, Karnataka unit chief Rizwan Arshad, Tarun Patel, Omkar Markam and recently appointed Kerala unit president Dean Kuriakose.
The Youth Congress cadre are happy that party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has kept his promise of including young faces in the list of candidates.
Union ministers who have been renominated include K V Thomas, V Narayanasamy, K C Venugopal and Mullappally Ramachandran.
Three names have been declared for the the four Himachal Pradesh seats. Partibha Singh, the wife of Chief Minister Virbahdra Singh, is contesting Mandi seat.
The candidate selection of the party has been marked by squabbles, and the fear of an electoral debacle forced several senior leaders to opt out of the fray.
The list for two crucial states, Delhi and Tamil Nadu, has not been announced till date over lack of unanimity over names: the scenario in the southern state is so bleak that the party's entire top rung has declared they would not be contesting polls.
Cricketer-turned-politician Azharuddin's Moradabad seat will now be contested by Begum Noor Bano, the former Rampur MP; former UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna-Joshi will contest from Lucknow.
Youth Congress' Tarun Patel has been fielded from Domariyaganj seat, which was represented by Jagdambika Pal, who recently left the party. Also, party spokesperson Raj Babbar, who had defeated UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple Yadav in a bye-election from Firozabad, was keen to shift his constituency and now has been fielded from Ghaziabad. Ramesh Chand Tomar, former MP from Ghaziabad, will contest the Gautam Budh Nagar seat.
Interestingly, there are some seats, where candidates have been changed. These include Meerut in UP where Nagma replaced Dayanand Gupta, two in Chhattisgarh - Raigarh, where Aarti Singh replaced Maneka Singh, Raipur, where Satyanarayan Sharma replaced Chhaya Verma. Daryl William Cherran Momin replaces D Zennith M Sangma at Tura in Meghalaya.
Candidates for seats, which were decided through primaries like Jhunjhunu and Dakshin Kannada, have also been declared. Rajbala Ola will contest Jhunjhunu, while Janardan Poojary will try his luck from Dakshin Kannada.
