The Congress on Sunday announced a list of 86 candidates for the upcoming Assembly elections in Kerala. Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will contest from Puthuppally, while current Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ramesh Chennithala will fight the Haripad seat.
Vatakara MP K Muraleedharan has been fielded from Thiruvananthapuram’s Nemon constituency. Nemon was the lone seat won by the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2016 Assembly elections, according to PTI.
The Congress is contesting 92 of the 140 seats in the Assembly elections to be held on April 6. The rest have been distributed among its allies. Congress state unit chief Mullappally Ramachandran, in a press conference on Sunday, said that candidates for the remaining six seats will be declared after further discussions with the national leadership, The Indian Express reported.
The announcement, however, led to a controversy after the state chief of the party’s women’s wing, Lathika Subhash, resigned from her post and tonsured her head in front of the party office in Capital Thiruvananthapuram, The Indian Express reported. Subhash was unhappy with the lesser representation of women in the candidate list. The 56-year-old said she was disappointed by the party’s decision not to give her the ticket from Ettumanoor, her hometown in Kottayam district, The Indian Express reported.
Commenting on the matter, Ramachandran told reporters that Subhash had asked for the Ettumanoor seat, but it had to be given to Congress’ ally. He added that there was no reason to sideline the women’s wing chief.
Ramachandran said that the party was confident of winning the election and claimed that the list showed a “generational change”, PTI reported. “[Congress MP] Rahul Gandhi wanted such a list...He wanted new faces to be accommodated in the list,” he said.
Earlier during the day, the BJP also announced a list of 112 candidates for the Kerala elections and said that it will contest on 115 seat.
Elections to the 140-seat Kerala Assembly will take place in a single phase on April 6. The votes will be counted on May 2. The ruling Left Democratic Front, a coalition of Left parties, will be primarily in contest with the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
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