AICC chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi will campaign for the party candidates on October 3 and 7 respectively in about half a dozen constituencies but the top leaders may not be able to settle the simmering tension in the grand-old party over selection of seats and candidates.

Almost all the parties are facing this problem but the issue in the Congress is a bit different. The party in Maha Gathbandhan is contesting 41 seats and several of its candidates are not its own which has caused murmurs in the party. About a dozen of its candidates had not been members of the party till a day before they were given the party symbol. Most of them had been in JD(U) and when the ruling party could not accommodate them it asked them to join the Congress and get a ticket conveniently.

According to party insiders there are at least ten such candidates who have come from other parties mainly JD(U) and contesting on the Congress symbol. Poornima Yadav, a sitting MlA from Nawada, could not get ticket from JD(U) but the party recommended her to the Congress and got it from Govindpur. Her husband Kaushal Yadav, also a sitting MlA, however, managed to get ticket from the ruling party from Hisua.

Anil Kumar, a former MP, who had been in and out of Congress, RJD and JD(U), failed to get JD(U) ticket this time but finally got one from the Congress from Bhore. In Bikram constituency, Congress candidate Siddhartha had contested last poll on lJP ticket and in Barbigha Sudarshan Kumar too was earlier in lJP. Party’s other candidates Surendra Ram (Bathnaha), Manohar Prasad Singh (Manihari),  Tauqeer Alam (Pranpur), Purnamasi Ram (Ramgarh), Binay Verma (Narkatiaganj) and Sudarshan Kumar (Barbigha) were given ticket reportedly at the behest of JD(U) and RJD.