Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2023: Congress Releases Fourth And Fifth List Of Candidates

The Congress on Tuesday named 61 more candidates for the Rajasthan Assembly elections, including its national spokesperson Gourav Vallabh and Manvendra Singh, who switched over from the BJP a few years ago.

Vallabh has been fielded from Udaipur, while Manvendra Singh, the son of former Union minister Jaswant Singh, has been nominated from Siwana.

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

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

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

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.

At a meeting of the Congress's Central Election Committee (CEC) on Tuesday, the party discussed the names of the probable candidates for the Rajasthan elections.

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 Rajasthan Congress on Tuesday appointed seven in-charges and three coordinators for the promotion of its seven guarantees ahead of the upcoming state polls.

These in-charges and coordinators will take the Congress' guarantees to every household as part of the 'Congress Guarantee Yatra', Rajasthan party in-charge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said in a post on X.

Rajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi has been appointed as Udaipur in-charge, Sachin Pilot has been given the responsibility of Ajmer, Harish Chaudhary of Jodhpur, Govind Ram Meghwal of Bikaner, Bhanwar Jitendra Singh of Jaipur, Mohan Prakash of Bharatpur and Pramod Jain Bhaya of Anta.

The three coordinators are All India Congress Committee secretaries Qazi Nizamuddin, Virendra Singh Rathore and Amrita Dhawan.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has announced seven guarantees, including providing laptops to government college students, English medium education to every student and an annual honorarium of Rs 10,000 to the woman head of a family, if the Congress returns to power in Rajasthan.

(With PTI inputs)