Rahul Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, is concerned over 'favouritism' in the suggested list of Congress leaders for the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly elections.
This development came on the same day a meeting of the Congress high command was held to discuss potential candidates for the Assembly elections. So far, the party has announced candidates for 48 of the 85 seats it will contest as part of the Mahavikas Aghadi seat-sharing arrangement.
According to sources, Rahul Gandhi was disappointed with the screening committee's choice of names submitted to the Congress Election Committee (CEC), and raised concerns at the Friday meeting. He highlighted that the list of candidate names provided appeared to "favour" certain Maharashtra Congress leaders, sources said.
He also questioned the allocation of some Congress strongholds to Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena in regions like Vidarbha and Mumbai, as part of the seat-sharing deal.
The MVA has reached an agreement on 255 of the total 288 Assembly seats. The Uddhav Sena, Congress, and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP-SP) will contest on 85 seats each in the upcoming polls. All three parties have so far released one list of candidates each.
The Uddhav Sena, Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP have declared candidates on 65, 48 and 45 seats, respectively.
However, a seat-sharing tussle is still underway on 18 of the 288 seats. Samajwadi Party leader and MLA Abu Asim Azmi jumped into the seat-sharing tussle on Friday, threatening to field candidates on 25 seats if the opposition alliance fails to keep aside five seats for his party's candidates. Samajwadi Party is also a part of the MVA.
The election to 288-member Maharashtra Assembly will happen in a single phase on November 20 and results will be declared on November 23.
