Congress finalises 40 more names including Nakul Nath, Vaibhav Gehlot for LS polls

New Delhi: Top Congress leadership on Monday discussed over 60 seats in five states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Assam and finalised the names of about 40 candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Sources said the party has decided to field former chief minister Kamal Nath's son Nakul Nath once again from Madhya Pradesh's Chhindwara and Ashok Gehlot's son Vaibhav from Jalore in Rajasthan. Speculation was rife about both Kamal Nath and his son Nakul switching over to the BJP ahead of the polls.

Both Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot are unlikely to contest, with the former's son entering the poll fray and the latter having responsibility of Chhattisgarh as AICC general secretary, the sources added.

The Congress' Central Election Committee (CEC), chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, met at the party headquarters to finalise candidates, days after the party released its first list of 39 candidates for the polls.

Among the seats that were discussed at the meeting included 14 each from Rajasthan, Assam and Gujarat, 16 from Madhya Pradesh and five from Uttarakhand, besides one from Union Territory of Daman and Diu.

For Rajasthan, about 10 candidates were finalised, including Rahul Kaswan, who quit the BJP to join the Congress on Monday, from Churu; Vaibhav Gehlot from Jalore and Harish Meena from Tonk-Sawai Madhopur.

Discussions were first taken up at the CEC meeting for the five Uttarakhand parliamentary constituencies. Former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi Ambika Soni, T S Singhdeo, P L Punia and Mohammad Jawaid, among others, attended the CEC. Though Rahul Gandhi was in Delhi, he did not attend the meet.

In its first list of 39 candidates announced on Friday, Rahul Gandhi's name figured as a candidate from Kerala's Wayanad again.

At the meeting on Monday, Congress general secretary in-charge of Uttarakhand Kumari Selja along with senior leaders from the hill state also participated in the discussions for selecting candidates for the five seats in the state.

During discussions on Rajasthan, Congress' state unit chief Govind Singh Dotasra, AICC in-charge of state Sukhjinder Randhawa and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Pilot were present.

AICC's Madhya Pradesh in-charge Jitendra Singh and state unit chief Jitu Patwari, among others, also participated in the discussions.

At the last CEC meet on Thursday, discussions were held on Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Sikkim, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Lakshwadeep.

According to the first list of candidates released by the party, former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel has been fielded from Rajnandgaon, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal from Alappuzha (Kerala) and Shashi Tharoor has been renominated from Thiruvananthapuram.