New Delhi: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has been appointed chairperson of the party’s screening committee for the selection of candidates for the upcoming Assam Assembly elections.
The All India Congress Committee announced the formation of screening committees late Saturday night for five states and Union territories scheduled to go to polls in the first half of the year. The four-member panels will finalise candidates for Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, AICC general secretary and Member of Parliament, will lead the Assam screening committee as the Congress prepares to contest the elections in alliance with other opposition parties in a bid to dislodge the BJP from power. Lok Sabha MPs Imran Masood and Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, along with Sirivella Prasad, have been appointed as members of the Assam panel.
Veteran leader Madhusudan Mistry will head the screening committee for Kerala, while former Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister T S Singh Deo has been named chairperson for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Senior Congress leader B K Hariprasad will lead the screening committee for the West Bengal Assembly elections.
The West Bengal panel will include Mohammad Jawed, Mamata Devi and B P Singh as members. For Kerala, Rajya Sabha MPs Syed Naseer Hussain and Neeraj Dangi, along with Abhishek Dutt, have been appointed. The Tamil Nadu and Puducherry committee will have Yashomati Thakur, G C Chandrashekhar and Anil Kumar Yadav as members.
The party also clarified that general secretaries in charge, Pradesh Congress Committee presidents, Congress Legislature Party leaders and AICC secretaries attached to the respective states will serve as ex-officio members of the screening committees.
Assembly elections in Assam, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry are due in the coming months. Polls for the 126-member Assam Assembly are expected to be held in March-April.
The Congress is part of a broad opposition alliance in Assam that includes CPI(M), Raijor Dal, Assam Jatiya Parishad, CPI, CPI(ML) Liberation, Jatiya Dal-Asom and the All Party Hill Leaders Conference. The ruling BJP currently has 64 MLAs in the Assembly, with its allies AGP, UPPL and BPF holding a combined strength of 19 seats. The Congress has 26 MLAs, while AIUDF has 15 and CPI(M) one, along with an Independent legislator.
