The Congress has kept up the suspense over its possible candidate in Varanasi to take on BJP’s prime ministerial Narendra Modi as it came out with a fresh list of 16 nominees for lok Sabha polls on Monday.
The party also remained silent on the candidate for the ludhiana lok Sabha seat represented by Union Minister Manish Tewari, who has expressed his reluctance to contest. The Congress also did not declare the name of candidate for Nanded from where former Maharashtra Chief Minister and Adarsh scam tainted Ashok Chavan is a possible contestant.
The names of 16 candidates announced on Monday include Union Minister Namo Narain Meena from Dausa (ST) in Rajasthan and Punjab ClP leader Sunil Jakhar from Ferozpur in the State. Meena has been shifted to Dausa from neighbouring Tonk-Sawai Madhopur from where former cricket captain Md Azaruddin is fighting. Azaruddin is a sitting MP from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh.
The Congress also announced the candidature of Pritam Ghosh for Hooghly seat in West Bengal where the BJP has fielded journalist-turned-politician and sitting Rajya Sabha member Chandan Mitra. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi had intervene to sort out the differences between senior Congress leader and party spokesperson Abdul Mannan and Pradesh Congress Committee president and Union Minister Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury over naming Pritam Ghosh.
The differences in the State Congress leadership came to the fore when Mannan threatened to quit active politics if lawyer Pratim Singha Roy was not made the party’s candidate from Hooghly.
In Tamil Nadu, Vazapadi Rama Suganthan, son of former Union Minister late Vazapadi K Ramamurthy, has been made the party candidate from Dharmapuri. In Maharashtra, party leader Nitin Patil has been fielded from Aurangabad, a seat being held by Shiv Sena since long.
Candidates announced included two from Karnataka — Saleem Ahmed from Haveri and Vinay Kulkarni from Dharwad — and one from Odisha Dharnidhar Nayak from Kendrapara.
Three candidates each were announced from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandu’, a former Minister in the then Mayawati Government in UP, who joined the Congress last week, has been made the party candidate from Allahabad.
Meanwhile, there is a talk within the Congress that a local candidate should be fielded for Varanasi seat. The name of Rajesh Mishra, a former MP, is being considered seriously. Mishra, who represented the seat from 2004 to 2009, has already said he has “no problem” to face BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.
Mishra had contested from the seat thrice including in 1999 and got 1.2 lakh votes in 2009 lok Sabha polls. He had finished fourth in the last polls as the election had become a tussle between Joshi, the eventual winner, and Mukhtar Ansari of the BSP.
Ajai Rai of the Samajwadi Party, who is now in the Congress, and also is an aspirant, had finished third. In 2004, Mishra had convincingly beat his BJP rival Shankar Prasad Jaiswal in a multi-cornered contest. Among the 16-lakh strong voters, there are about four lakh Muslims, three lakh Brahmins and almost an equal number of Vaishyas in Varanasi. Arvind Kejriwal of the AAP has declared that he may contest from Varanasi.
The BSP has fielded a Vaishya candidate while the SP candidate is from Chaurasia community. The Congress is seeking to give a fight to Modi with the expected backing of Brahmins and Muslims.