Selection of Congress candidates put on hold in Telangana

​Hyderabad: Selection of Congress candidates for the Assembly elections may get delayed further as the AICC Screening Committee set to visit the State on October 21 for further deliberations. 

Though it has been speculated that the Screening Committee has completed the exercise last week, doubts have been cropped up as the Committee set for another visit to the State. 

The Congress has begun the exercise for selection of candidates as soon as the election schedule was announced on October 6. The Pradesh Election Committee has met thrice earlier and shortlisted the names of aspirants, and submitted it to the Screening Committee. 

The members of the Screening Committee, who arrived in Hyderabad on October 10, stayed for three days and conducted the exercise. Party leaders said that the AICC committee would submit its recommendations to the core committee of the high command by October 16, which would a take final decision on the candidates. 

According to sources, the Screening Committee has deferred with the submission list and decided to visit the State once again on 21. The Committee might spend a day or two in the State during its second visit. This means that selection process may not be completed till October-end. The process of submission of best candidates to the core committee and examination of the list by that committee would take at least a week’s time.  

Few party leaders said that the delay has been taking place as the high command was busy finalising the names of candidates for other four poll-bound States Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram. The AICC has to finalise the list of candidates for Chhattisgarh as the first notification has been issued on October 16, and the second notification would be issued on October 26. The notification for Madhya Pradesh would be issued on November 2. 

The AICC core committee may take up the finalisation of candidates after the end of nominations to Chhattisgarh election. It would meet to take a call on the candidates of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Telangana. Further, the agreement of seat-sharing among alliance partners is also delaying the finalisation of Congress candidates. The Telugu Desam, Telangana Jana Samithi and CPI have been seeking more than 30 seats, whereas the Congress was ready to concede 20 seats. 

State Congress leaders are trying to convince the alliance partners to settle for lesser number of seats than they have demanded. The Congress wants to contest between 95 to 100 seats and leave the rest to alliance partners. There are differences among the proposed coalition partners on some seats as both have been claiming good chances for their win. The Congress may have to make some sacrifices to settle the issue.