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With Congress leaders reluctant to contest the Delhi Assembly polls, the Grand Old Party is finding it difficult to find contestants for all seats.
On Thursday, it managed to declared candidates for 15 more seats. President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter, Sharmistha Mukherjee, has been given a ticket from Greater Kailash. But six seats — including the high-profile New Delhi constituency — are proving to be a headache. Former Delhi minister Kiran Walia was not keen to contest it. AAP chief and former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is contesting this seat, which he had won by defeating his predecessor Sheila Dikshit, in 2013.
The Congress is hard put to nominate candidates for six seats, including Babarpur, Seemapuri and Moti Nagar, besides New Delhi. Sources in the party said though the Central Election Committee had cleared all the names, trouble over these had seats had held up the list of candidates. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi even held a meeting with state incharge P C Chacko to try and solve the issue.
Apart from Sharmistha, the other prominent names in the Congress list include three councilors — Mukesh Goel from Adarsh Nagar, Bansi Lal from Krishna Nagar, and Rinku from Gokalpur, which is a reserved seat.
