New Delhi: The Congress has lined up fresh faces on most of around 40 urban assembly seats that the party has been losing for years, to take on the ruling BJP in Gujarat. Most of these urban seats are in areas like Ahmedabad 12, Surat, 8, Vadodara 5, Rajkot 3, Bhavnagar 3, Jamnagar 3 among others.
Taking a cue from Rahul Gandhi’s idea to field fresh faces in the tough seats, the state unit had sought applications from the ticket aspirants over the past few weeks. Later, senior leaders obtained feedback from party workers at the block level to short-list the candidates, who were discussed extensively over the past two days in Ahmedabad.
AICC in charge of Gujarat Raghu Sharma listened to the views of the state election committee over the distribution of tickets, which will next be discussed and endorsed by the party’s Screening Committee headed by Kerala leader Ramesh Chennithala and later cleared by the Central Election Committee headed by party president Sonia Gandhi next week.
Sonia Gandhi would chair the CEC in her capacity as the party president. Though the party is scheduled to elect a new president on October 17, the results would be out on October 19 and the new person would take charge after a few days. The new president would have a role in the CEC after taking office.
Accordingly, the party managers are planning to put out the first list of around 50/182 candidates before October 20. “We have discussed more candidates but will announce only 50 initially,” said a senior AICC functionary.
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According to sources, these 50 seats are the ones where a single deserving candidate has been identified while the other seats with more than one aspirant, some more discussion may be required in the screening and the central election committees.
“New persons, youngsters and women will be given a chance on the seats that the party has been losing for many years,” former Gujarat Congress chief Amit Chavda told ETV Bharat. Besides new faces, a suggestion was also made by some state election panel members during the past two days that no person above the age of 70 years should be given a ticket and youngsters and women candidates should be put up in their place.
However, no final view has been taken over the suggestion so far, said the sources. According to sources, the views of these members are in line with the Udaipur Declaration in which it was decided to have half of all office bearers under 50 years of age and give space to more younger and new faces in the party and electoral roles.
Recently, one of the presidential candidates Mallikarjun Kharge said if he becomes party chief, he will push the Udaipur Declaration. The coming elections are crucial for the Congress which is eyeing to stage a comeback against the BJP which has been in power for the past 27 years. The selection of tickets is being done carefully to pick up the winnable candidate as well as keep the process transparent, said party insiders.
AAP too has entered the fray, making a three-sided contest this time, though both Congress and BJP discount the new player.
