It’s official: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram will not be contesting elections this time; instead, his son Karti Chidambaram will try his luck from Tamil Nadu’s Sivaganga constituency.
While Mr. Chidambaram, who has been elected to the Lok Sabha for a record seven times, has decided to hang up his boots, his Cabinet colleague Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was a Lok Sabha MP in 1980 and 1984 from Maharashtra’s Washim district, has agreed to contest the Udhampur seat in Jammu and Kashmir (currently held by the Congress).
Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar — currently in the Rajya Sabha — will contest once again from Mayiladuthurai in Tamil Nadu, while Youth Congress leader Mohan Kumaramangalam, son of P.R. Kumaramangalam, who was a minister in the P.V. Narasimha Rao government but later joined the BJP, has got the ticket from Salem.
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Laxman Singh, brother of Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh, will be the candidate from Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, pitted against Sushma Swaraj(BJP). Mr. Laxman Singh has been an MP five times in the past, four times on a Congress ticket and once on a BJP ticket from Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh.
The Congress has renominated Ramesh Kumar (South Delhi) and Mahabal Mishra (West Delhi).