BHUBANESWAR: The slogan of winning 90 Assembly seats in the next election and forming government may turn out to be a tough task for Congress as the party may not find suitable candidates for more than half of the constituencies. Sources said barring 40 to 50 seats, Congress has failed to identify suitable candidates for contesting the next election. The party has started exercise to identify candidates for the next election and even initiated the process to forge an alliance with the left parties.
However in many seats, it has become difficult to identify candidates as its ranks have gone down because of desertion of leaders to join either BJP or BJD. Sources in the party said this time Congress has started candidate selection exercise earlier and green signal has been given to prospective candidates in nearly 50 Assembly seats. A decision has also been taken not to deny tickets to those who had come second in the 2019 Assembly elections. Congress candidates had come second in 31 Assembly seats while five other candidates had secured 30,000 to 40,000 votes. Most of the candidates in this category are from Balasore, Keonjhar, Kandhamal and undivided Koraput districts.
In coastal districts, the party had come second in only eight seats in the last election. In rest of the seats, the candidates had secured less than 10,000 votes and lost their deposit.President of Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) Sarat Pattanayak, however, told The New Indian Express that apart from the 31 candidates who had come second, there are some nominees who had polled more than 30,000 votes. “The party has identified around 50 such seats where it is in a strong position and is in direct contest with the BJD,” he added.