Bihar polls: Congress central poll body meet today to finalise candidates

By Siddharth Sharma
New Delhi [India], October 14 : The central election committee (CEC) of the Congress has scheduled to hold a meeting on Wednesday evening at the residence of interim party president Sonia Gandhi, here to finalise candidates for the first phase of Bihar Assembly polls.
The meet will be the second of the committee to decide candidates for the second and third phase of Bihar polls.
The previous meeting was held on October 5, after which the first list of 21 candidates was announced on October 7, which triggered a lot of criticism from within the party. According to sources, the top leadership has given clear message to the leaders that nothing unfair will be tolerated as many state leaders have complained that candidate selection was not fair.
Another problem which the party is faced with is seat-sharing deal that has been finalised with its grand alliance partner RJD. Congress will be fielding its candidates on 70 seats as part of the seat sharing deal announce by the opposition grand alliance (mahagathbandhan).
Some of the leaders have expressed their unhappiness over the deal as they say RJD has offered weak seats to the Congress Party where fight is tough and most of the seats are urban or semi-urban seats.
CEC will discuss the names of candidates for the rest of the 49 seats on Wednesday.
The party has already formed 6 Committees for Bihar Assembly Polls. The party seems unhappy with the section of the leaders in the process as interestingly Election Management and Coordination Committee has been formed by Sonia Gandhi headed by Randeep Surjewala and Mohan Prakash has been appointed as a Convenor but State President Madan Mohan Jha, CLP Leader Sadanand Singh, Prominent leader Rajya Sabha MP and Chief of Campaign Committee Akhilesh Prasad Singh has been kept out from the Committee whereas senior leaders like Tariq Anwar, Shakeel Ahmed, Subodh Kant Sahay have been incl
In the last Assembly polls, the Congress fought only on 41 seats out of which 27 candidates won the elections but soon after JDU quit the alliance, one section of the MLAs quit the party and later joined JDU.
This time, the party is willing to repeat all MLAs who have remained with the party. CLP leader and nine-time MLA Sadanand Singh has been given free hand to name his replacement, a source said.
This Bihar Assembly poll is considered as a big challenge for both the alliance in Bihar.
In the NDA alliance, the Lok Janshakti Party(LJP) will not contest seats where BJP will be contesting, however, it will fight against Janata Dal (United). Both JDU and LJP are in a pre-poll alliance with the BJP.
Upendra Kushwaha's RLSP has quit Mahagathbandhan and forged an alliance with BSP. Hindustan Avam Morcha (HAM) chief Jitan Ram Manjhi has joined NDA. The huge setback has been given by Mukesh Sahni from Vikasheel Insan Party (VIP) who announced his disassociation from Mahagathbandhan in a live Press Conference in Patna on Sunday.
Congress, CPI, CPM are now part of this alliance under the leadership of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Bihar with 243 assembly seats will go to polls in three phases: October 28, November 3 and November 7. The results will be declared on November 10.