Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with party leader Rahul Gandhi
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: Congress’ crucial Central Election Committee will meet here on Monday and Tuesday to choose candidates for the elections to Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir, where the party believes they could capitalise on their Lok Sabha performance.
Congress has already declared nine candidates for the first phase while it has to decide on 28 candidates for the next two phases ending on October 1. It will be fighting for 32 seats in alliance with I.N.D.I.A partners, but is engaged in a 'friendly fight' with the National Conference in five seats.
While the choosing of candidates for Jammu and Kashmir may not trigger trouble for the central leadership, they will face intense bargaining from senior functionaries who are leading factions in Haryana over the choice of nominees for the 90 seats.
The four-member Screening Committee headed by Ajay Maken has completed consultations with state leaders and is learnt to have finalised a panel of names for most of the 90 seats that will be going to polls on October 5. The counting of votes is on October 8.
The Maken-led panel held discussions for five days from August 26 where factions and other leaders expressed their views. Sources indicated that the Bhupinder Hooda-led faction and Kumari Selja-led group are in no mood to leave space for the other.
The general mood in the central leadership is that both factions should fight the polls unitedly as the party stands a chance to return to power in the state after ten years. They are banking on the party’s victory in five out of ten seats in Lok Sabha polls.
Sources said Congress may retain 20-24 sitting MLAs while bringing new faces in other sitting seats while denying tickets to those who lost polls consecutive times. Congress had won 31 seats of which Kuldeep Bishnoi and Kiran Chowdhury left for BJP.
It is also to be seen whether the central leadership will allow sitting MPs like Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala to contest Assembly elections.
Though Congress General Secretary and Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria has made it clear that sitting MPs will not be allowed to contest, he softened his stand by saying that MPs could also become Chief Ministerial contender if they have the support of majority of MLAs.
Though the central leadership has accepted Hooda’s dominance in the state unit, Selja has said that she is in the race for the top post in the state.
With the BJP trying to woo non-Jat communities, the Congress may also tweak its strategy and field less number of Jat candidates compared to what it chose last time. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Congress chose only two Jat candidates out of nine.