Ahmedabad: The Gujarat unit of the Congress has rolled out a programme for finalising aspiring candidates’ panels for each Assembly seat.
By September-end, the party plans to finalise the list for the scrutiny committee and parliamentary board to approve it. The Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in December 2022.
In some districts, on each seat at least three to four aspiring candidates are likely to submit their bio-data to the district committees, on a few seats aspiring candidates number one dozen to 16, said party sources.
State party president Jagdish Thakor on Wednesday evening asked aspiring candidates to submit their bio-data to district/city Congress committees by September 12 which will be further submitted by the district committees to the state party unit by September 15.
These bio-data will be reviewed by the state party leaders on September 18 and on September 21, 22 and 23 the zonal in-charge, election committees members’ views and opinions will be heard by the state party leaders.
In the 2017 Assembly elections, all five Assembly seats of Amreli district were won by the Congress. Now the MLA represents five seats, as one MLA crossed over to the BJP and won the by-election on a BJP poll symbol from Dhari seat, said Dhirajlal Raiyani, Amreli District Congress Committee president.
Raiyani added that in all five Assembly seats, the sitting MLAs are likely to be renominated, but in Dhari and one more seat, there are two to three aspirants for the ticket, but the Congress will convince them to make way for sitting MLAs.
Surat District Congress Committee president Manhar Patel is hopeful that the committee will meet the deadline in finalising panels, on each seat there are four to five aspiring candidates, excluding Mangrol seat, on which 16 candidates are in fray.
In 2017 Assembly elections, Congress had won only on Mandvi seat, the rest four had gone to the BJP.
–IANS