Lok Sabha member from Chhindwara, Nakul Nath, son of former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, is among those Lok Sabha candidates whose names were cleared by the Central Election Committee (CEC) of the Congress on March 11.
The CEC is said to have discussed around 63 seats across several States, including Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Rajasthan. About 40 names have been cleared.
The meeting of the poll panel, presided by Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge, was attended by Sonia Gandhi, K.C. Venugopal, T.S. Singhdeo among others. The next meeting of the CEC is on March 15.
There is no official word from the party, but sources told The Hindu that former Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s son, Vaibhav Gehlot, has been cleared for the Jalore Lok Sabha constituency.
Their inclusions are significant as former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, after the 2019 Lok Sabha poll debacle, blamed the senior leaders for focussing on the constituencies of their sons instead of looking to win their respective States. During the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had Congress governments.
While the Nath junior won the Chhindwara seat in 2019, Gehlot junior has lost from their stronghold of Jodhpur.
The CEC also discussed all the 14 Lok Sabha seats from Assam. Some of the senior leaders, including party Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha, Gaurav Gogoi, could be looking to contest from new seat because of delimitation in Assam that resulted in redrawing the boundaries of their existing seats.
Mr. Gogoi’s current seat of Kaliabor has been redrawn and is now known as Kaziranga. That is why the party is said to be fielding him from Jorhat, his father the late Tarun Gogoi’s hometown, or the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat.
In Uttarakhand, while the party is keen to field senior leaders, at least three of them have expressed their unwillingness, said sources.
Unlike Chhattisgarh, where senior leaders like Bhupesh Baghel and Tamradhwaj Sahu became candidates, senior leaders and former Chief Ministers such as Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot, Digvijaya Singh and Harish Rawat will not be contesting the polls.
On March 7, the CEC had cleared 39 names, including Mr. Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad, Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram and Mr. Venugopal from Alappuzha in Kerala.
