Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge with Sonia Gandhi and KC Venugopal during the Central Election Committee meeting on Madhya Pradesh, at AICC HQ in New Delhi, Thursday, March 21, 2024.
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai will contest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again in Varanasi while former Madhya Pradesh party chief Arun Yadav will take on Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna, sources said on Thursday.
The decisions were taken at a meeting of Congress’ Central Election Committee (CEC) chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by panel members Sonia Gandhi, General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal, Karnataka Minister K J George and Telangana Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy, among others.
The panel also cleared the name of sitting MP Danish Ali, who quit BSP and joined Congress on Wednesday, to fight from Amroha while Imran Masood will fight from Saharanpur. Senior leader Akhilesh Prasad Singh will fight from Deoria, sources said.
While Yadav will take on Scindia, who had quit Congress earlier and is a Union minister in the Modi government, sources said Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Jeetu Patwaria is unlikely to contest.
The CEC will meet again on Friday at 9:30 am to discuss candidates for more seats and deliberations on the party’s choices for Amethi and Rae Bareli are likely to come up. Sources said some UP leaders raised the issue at the CEC meeting but there was no discussion on it.
Separately, sources said actress Swara Bhaskar reached out to Congress leadership seeking a ticket from Mumbai North Central, which was once represented by party member Priya Dutt. Sources said she contacted party’s Maharashtra in-charge Ramesh Chennithala.
Folk singer Neha Singh Rathore is also learnt to have expressed her interest in fighting the Lok Sabha elections on a Congress ticket.