The Congress is doing exercise to come out with please-all list of candidates for the ensuing Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh. It has finalised 155 candidates so far.
After Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has been decided face of the party in the Assembly polls, senior Congress leaders are busy in finalising tickets in New Delhi.
A meeting of party’s screening committee was held at New Delhi on Thursday to finalise the names of candidates for the Assembly elections. The meeting was presided over by screening committee chairman and AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry.
Party sources from New Delhi informed The Pioneer that a final decision was taken to repeat all the sitting legislators besides candidates for the 47 Tribal and 35 Schedule Caste seats were also finalised, it was also decided that the seven party candidates who lost the 2008 elections by less than 1,000 votes would also be repeated for the upcoming assembly polls.
With this equation the Congress has finalised candidates on 155 seats and the decision to decide remaining general seats would be taken in the next meeting of the screening committee scheduled to be held on September 29 and 30.
The meeting ended without deciding the names of the candidates for general category seats as Congress general secretary in-charge for Madhya Pradesh Mohan Prakash could not attend the meeting due to personal reasons.
Though the meet could not cleat the list of candidates but it successfully set up the criteria for providing party ticket to the candidates.
All the senior party leaders from state including AICC general secretary and former chief minister Digvijay Singh, Union Minister Kamal Nath and state election campaign committee Chairman Jyotiraditya Scindia attended the meeting held at New Delhi.
All the senior leaders of the party unanimously agreed for the criteria set up to provide party ticket to the candidates. The main features of the criteria include that those who have lost two consecutive elections, those who lost last election by margin of 15,000 or more votes and those who lost their deposits would not be considered for the party ticket.
Besides it was also decided that if at all need be to project party face against BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Shivraj Singh Chouhan than it would be none other than union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia and party focus be on social engineering in distributing party tickets.
Earlier on September 14, the party held its first election meeting to finalize candidates where it was decided to field all sitting legislators.
The first list of 72 candidates was sent earlier to the screening committee and the next meeting was held on September 22, in which discussion was held on candidates for the remaining 158 constituencies. Both the meetings were attended by al the senior leaders from the state besides party general secretary in-charge of the State.