Congress election screening panel to meet in Delhi on Monday, likely to finalise MP list

The Madhya Pradesh state leadership will be attending the Congress Election Screening Committee meeting at party headquarters in Delhi on Monday to finalise its list of candidates for the Assembly elections.

"Lists of candidates (for Madhya Pradesh) will be released at an appropriate time, but those names that have been finalised will be given a signal to start their preparations. We have a meeting in Delhi tomorrow," said Kamal Nath, the Madhya Pradesh Congress president. 

Kamal Nath was briefing the media in Bhopal on Sunday and said the meeting will be held in Delhi on Monday.

The meeting will also review poll preparations for Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Rajasthan and Mizoram. 

Notably, it will be the third meeting of the Congress Election Screening Committee in New Delhi in the past one month. 

Highly placed sources in MP Congress, however, told IANS that many candidates have already been asked to start their poll preparations and they have already started. 

Sources also said that the Congress may release the list of candidates only after the Election Commission of India (ECI) announces the poll dates. MP Congress leaders said the party had released its four lists of candidates in 2018 and it was done after the code of conduct was imposed. 

The ruling BJP released the names of 39 candidates a month ago. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has also released its first list of 10 candidates a couple of weeks ago. 

During a press conference on Saturday, Union Minister and Madhya Pradesh election in-charge for BJP, Narendra Singh Tomar, said that the second list will be released soon.