Congress names 61 more candidates for Rajasthan polls

New Delhi/Jaipur, Oct 31 (PTI) The Congress on Tuesday named 61 more candidates for the Rajasthan Assembly polls, including its national spokesperson Gourav Vallabh and Manvendra Singh, who switched over from the BJP.

While Vallabh has been fielded from Udaipur, Singh has been nominated from Siwana.

In the fourth and fifth lists of candidates released by the Congress on Tuesday, it has denied tickets to seven incumbent MLAs.

The party has named 14 incumbent MLAs, including two Independent winners of the 2018 Assembly election and two more who won the polls on Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) tickets and subsequently, joined the Congress.

Two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rebels have also been fielded by the party.

The ruling party in Rajasthan has named seven women in the latest lists. More than 30 fresh faces have also been fielded by it.

The 200-member Rajasthan Assembly will go to polls on November 25 and the counting of votes will be taken up on December 3.

The Congress has so far announced 156 candidates for the polls in the desert state, where the party seeks to buck the trend of incumbent governments being voted out.

At a meeting of the Congress's Central Election Committee (CEC) earlier in the evening, the party discussed the names of the probable candidates for the Rajasthan polls.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Sonia Gandhi, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of the state Sukhjinder Randhawa and the party's state unit chief, Govind Dotasra, attended the meeting.

AICC general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal and Rajasthan screening committee chief Gaurav Gogoi, besides the members of the CEC, also attended the meeting.

The Congress had released its third list of 19 candidates for the Rajasthan polls on Thursday. The first list had the names of 43 candidates, while the second had the names of another 33.

Johari Lal Meena (Rajgarh), Babu Lal (Kathumar), Khiladi Lal Bairwa (Baseri), Bharosi Lal (Hindaun) and Bharat Singh Kundanpur (Sangod) are among the incumbent MLAs who have been denied tickets by the Congress.

Two BJP turncoats -- Vikas Chaudhary and Surendra Goyal -- have been fielded by the party from Kishangarh and Jaitaran respectively.

The names of Urban Development and Housing Minister Shanti Dhariwal, Public Health Engineering Department Minister Mahesh Joshi and Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation (RTDC) Chairman Dharmendra Rathore, who were served show-cause notices for not adhering to the party high-command's orders, are still under consideration.

Going against the party's whip in 2022, Dhariwal and Joshi, along with minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, had held a meeting at Dhariwal's residence with the MLAs supporting Gehlot as the chief ministerial candidate.

The 14 incumbent MLAs fielded by the party are -- Deependra Singh Shekhawat, Amar Singh Jatav, Indira Meena, Prashant Bairwa, Padmaram Meghwal, Nagraj Meena, Rajendra Singh Bidhuri, Deepchand Kheria, Jogendra Singh Awana, Ameen Khan, Rooparam Meghwal, Saleh Mohammad, Mahadev Singh and Kanti Prasad Meena. PTI SKC AG RC