Congress To Repeat Most Of Its Sitting MLAs In Haryana Elections, High Command To Decide On Selja And Surjewala's Candidature

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to cut the tickets of almost half of its Haryana MLAs, the Congress contemplates renominating most of its 28 incumbent MLAs in upcoming assembly elections.

In the Congress’s Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting held on Monday (2 September), the selection of candidates for the Haryana assembly elections, scheduled for 5 October, was on the agenda.

However, as per Indian Express sources, candidates on 41 of 90 seats could not be finalised. The party is likely to declare all 90 candidates at once on Wednesday after discussing the remaining seats on Tuesday. 

After the meeting, Congress Haryana in-charge Deepak Babaria said, "A list with 49 names was given by the screening committee for Haryana to the CEC. A total of 34 names have been cleared, while 15 are pending."

To discuss the 15 names, the meeting resumed on Tuesday morning, while the discussion on the remaining 41 seats will be done in Tuesday evening in presence of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

It is yet to be decided whether the Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan Randeep Singh Surjewala and Lok Sabha MP from Sirsa in Haryana, Kumari Selja will be allowed to contest the assembly elections.

Notably, Babaria had earlier said that the incumbent MPs would not be allowed to contest. However, later, he took a U-turn and said, "I have not been told about them by the party high command."

Rae Bareli MP Rahul Gandhi reportedly suggested giving tickets to a few Congress workers and not just to established leaders. The focus is also on "good image" and "winnability," as per Babaria.