While a pre-poll alliance with the Samajwadi Party is still not ruled out by any of the senior Congress leaders, the high-powered State Election Committee (SEC) of Uttar Pradesh Congress finalised the names of the remaining 20 party legislators from the same constituency where they successfully contested last time.
It may be mentioned that eight Congress MlAs along with one independent Ruby Prasad won the election with Congress’s support) already switched their loyalties and shifted to other groups.
“All the remaining 20 Party legislators had shown their interest to contest from same Assembly segment so the SEC during its meeting on Thursday had cleared all those names”, confirmed MP and senior Party leader Pramod Tewari here on Thursday evening. He said that now the name will be sent to Central Election Committee (CEC) headed by Party president Sonia Gandhi for final announcement.
Tewari said that the SEC also discussed candidates for all the 403 seats on Thursday during which they will decide the names of two to three candidates for each seat before forwarding it to CEC for final call.
He claimed that the Party leaders were full of energy this time, and each seats had about a dozen aspirants.
Meanwhile, SEC reportedly discusses names of candidates but still they opened all options of an alliance with the Samajwadi Party in the last moment.
The 36 members committee headed by State president, Raj Babbar, started discussion here at the state party office on Thursday morning. The SEC will also sit on Friday and Saturday before forwarding the names to CEC for its final approval and announcement of the candidates.
Raj Babbar told reporters here that the meeting will continue for three days and the members would discuss each and every candidate before recommending it to the high command.
The deputy chairperson of the committee is Nirmal Khatri while former Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, who is the CM face for UP polls along with former Minister Jitin Prasada, MP Sanjay Singh, MP Pl Puniya, MP Pramod Tewari, Congress legislative Party leader Pradeep Mathur and several other members, attended the meet on Thursday.
However, about a dozen leaders of the State including Salman Khursid, Shreeprakash Jaiswal and RPN Singh were absent during
the meeting.