KOCHI: The Congress party has almost finalised its candidates for the four seats which it did not announce in the first list. The list will be announced after the AICC president Rahul Gandhi, who is in Gulbarga, gets back to New Delhi.
The Congress has finalised the names of Adoor Prakash, sitting Konni MLA, for the Attingal LS seat and Shanimol Usman, Mahila Congress former state president, for the Alappuzha LS seat. In Wayanad, T Siddique is the likely candidate while in Vadakara Praveen Kumar is the front-runner.
It may be noted that for the prestigious Wayanad seat,there were several aspirants but AICC general secretary Oomen Chandy was adamant on T Siddique, his close confidant, being awarded the seat. The seat was with the ‘I’ group in the Congress and Ramesh Chennithala had to concede the seat owing to Chandy’s standing his ground.
There is lot of pressure from the party office-bearers and ordinary workers from Vadakara constituency for the candidature of Mullappally Ramachandran, but party sources told Express the KPCC president is not favourably disposed to the idea. Sources also indicated that while Mullappally is the best candidate to take on P Jayarajan put up by the LDF, the KPCC president believes it won’t work since he has to coordinate the electioneering in all the constituencies.
The Congress has finalised its list of candidates after getting proper feedback from all the constituencies as well as taking into consideration the survey conducted by the AICC. The party has also tried to factor in the the communal equations while drawing up a proper list to take on the LDF.