The Congress on Friday announced its first list of candidates which included the candidature of its General Secretary (Organisation), K C Venugopal from Alappuzha, ex Chhattisgarh chief minister Bupesh Baghel, Rahul Gandhi from Wayanad apart from the probable Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
An AICC spokesperson said on the condition of anonymity, “There has been buzz that all the top leaders were told (by high command) to prepare to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. In the first list, Bupesh Baghel and KC Venugopal are big names. It would be interesting to see if Congress party will field Rajya Sabha members as well, like they fielded Venugopal. However the problem with that would be, they cannot re-elect the ceded RS seats in several states except Telangana and Karnataka where the grand old party has majority, apart from Himachal Pradesh.”
He added, “If Venugopal wins the upcoming elections, it would mean that Congress will lose one seat in Rajya Sabha to the BJP who is presently a Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan and in a bypoll, the Congress does not have numbers in the Assembly to re-elect a Congress candidate.”
Presently a member of the Rajya Sabha, Venugopal will return to his home turf at Alappuzha, which he won in the 2009 and 2014 Lok Sabha polls. However, Priyanka Gandhi’s candidacy hasn’t been announced yet. A Congress leader associated with Rae Bareli seat said, “The preparations have started, it is almost final that Priyanka Gandhi would contest the Rae Bareli.”
Noting the entry of top leaders in Lok Sabha, former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is contesting the Lok Sabha elections after nearly a decade. Baghel will contest the polls from Rajnandgaon, considered to be a BJP stronghold. Baghel lost the Parliamentary elections in 2009 from Raipur. BJP’s Santosh Pandey, who has been re-fielded from Rajnandgaon, has represented the constituency since 2014.