Congress on Sunday announced the candidates for most of the Maharashtra Assembly seats and also for the bypolls to a Lok Sabha seat and various Assembly constituencies in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi approved the candidature of 51 Assembly seats of the 125 seats in its share in alliance with NCP from the total of 250 assembly seats in the State. The list of candidates was finalised after the party’s Central Election Committee met under the chairmanship of Sonia Gandhi and cleared the names.

Former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan will contest from Bhikar seat, while former Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde’s daughter Praniti will contest the Solapur City Central. State party chief Vijay Balasaheb Thorat is the candidate from Sangamner.

Former Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s son Amit has been fielded from the Latur City seat and senior party leader Nitin Raut, who heads the party’s SC department, has been fielded from the Nagpur North (reserved) constituency.

Maharashtra Congress chief Balasaheb Thorat said Congress is likely to have an “upper hand” in alliance with the NCP for next month’s Assembly polls and may contest more seats than the ‘125 each’ formula earlier agreed upon. The State goes to polls on October 21 and counting of votes will be held on October 24.

“The NCP admits that the Congress will have an upper hand. Going by the number of candidates and capacity to put up a challenge, the Congress is of the opinion of contesting more seats than the earlier formula of 125 seats each,” Thorat said after meeting NCP leader Dhananjay Munde.

The party also approved the candidature of Ashok Kumar for Samastipur-SC Lok Sabha constituency in Bihar while the candidatures of Sayeeda Banu from the Kishanganj Assembly seat in Bihar, Rita Chaudhary from Mandawa in Rajasthan, Harendra Mirdha from the Khinwsar Assembly constituency in Rajasthan and Mannu Devi for the Balha-SC Assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

The bypolls for the Samastipur seat was necessitated after the death of Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) Member of Parliament (MP) Ram Chandra Paswan. In Bihar, the Grand Alliance comprising the RJD, Congress, Hindustani Awam Morcha and VIP party could manage to win only one out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 general elections.

The bypolls for the Kishanganj assembly seat was required as Mohammad Javed, a Congress MLA from Kishanganj got elected to the Lok Sabha. Election Commission announced the schedule for the bypolls on October 21, while the counting of votes will take place on October 24.

The bypolls in Rajasthan are being conducted as Khinwsar MLA Hanuman Beniwal and Mandava MLA Narendra Kumar were elected to Lok Sabha in May this year. Of 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan, the Congress has 106 MLAs, including the six who defected to the party from the BSP recently. The BJP has 72 MLAs; CPI (M), Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) and the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) have two legislators each while the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an ally of the Congress, has one MLA. Thirteen legislators are Independent.