New Delhi: Congress on Thursday released the first list of 15 Lok Sabha candidates for Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
The list includes 11 candidates from Uttar Pradesh and four from Gujarat. Congress president Rahul Gandhi will contest from his bastion Amethi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi from her home turf, Rae Bareli.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Congress had managed to win only these two bastions in Uttar Pradesh that has 80 Parliamentary constituencies.
The others who features in this list fare senior party leader Salman Khurshid (Farrukhabad), RPN Singh (Kushi Nagar), Nirmal Singh (Faizabad), Brij Lal Khabri (Jalaun), Rajaram Pal (Akbarpur), Imran Masood (Saharanpur), Saleem Iqbal Shervani(Badaun), Jitin Prasad (Dhaurahra) and Annu Singh (Unnao).
Candidates for a few seats in Gujarat, including the Vadodara and Anand constituencies that are BJP strongholds, were also announced. Prashant Patel has been fielded as the party candidate from Vadodara while senior party leader Bharatsinh Solanki will contest from Anand.
Solanki had won the Lok Sabha elections from Anand in 2004 and 2009, but lost to Dilipbhai Patel of the BJP in 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had contested the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Vadodara.
However, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress in-charge for eastern Uttar Pradesh, was missing from this list of candidates.
