Gujarat bypolls: Congress may announce final list tomorrow

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat Congress will submit its final list of candidates for Assembly and Lok Sabha bypolls, due next month, to the party high command tomorrow, a top party functionary said.

The state Parliamentary Board held a meeting here tonight to finalise the panel of candidates for bye-elections to nine Assembly seats and one Lok Sabha seat slated for September 13.

"We held a meeting today to discuss the report submitted by our observers of all the 10 seats. We will finalise the panel of (probable) candidates for each seat and send it to central Parliamentary Board for final announcement," state Congress chief Arjun Modhwadia said.

Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee spokesperson Manish Doshi said the party has received names of around 60 probable candidates for the nine Assembly seats.

"As per our rule, the panel for each seat must not exceed three names. Thus, out of these 60-odd names, the board will choose 27 names, which comes at roughly three candidates per seat. In seats like Maninagar, eight candidates have expressed their desire to contest elections. But, only three names will be put in the final panel," Doshi said.

"Modhwadia and Shankarsinh Vaghela (Leader of Opposition in Assembly) will go to Delhi tomorrow evening with the final list and hand it over to our high command for further action and announcement," he said.

Bypolls in nine Assembly seats were necessitated as BJP MLAs vacated their seats on getting elected to Lok Sabha.

The seats where bypolls will be held are: Anand, Limkheda (Dahod), Deesa (Banaskantha), Matar (Kheda), Maninagar (Ahmedabad), Talaja (Bhavnagar), Tankara (Rajkot), Khambhalia (Jamnagar) and Mangrol (Junagadh).

Election to Vadodara Lok Sabha seat became necessary after Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to retain Varanasi, which he had won along with Vadodara. As a sitting MLA, he also vacated the Maninagar Assembly seat.