Congress to finalise candidates for Lok Sabha polls in CEC meet on 7 March

Top Congress leadership is likely to deliberate and finalise the candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections when the party's central election committee meeting in New Delhi on 7 March.

Congress sources said the party is likely to declare its first list of candidates soon to enable the candidates to start their poll campaign.

Several states have already held meetings of their respective screening committees and have forwarded the list of candidates for seats in their states.

These will be finalised by the top party leadership in the central election committee meeting. Chaired by party president Mallikarjun Kharge, the committee also includes former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, besides AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal, Ambika Soni, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and T.S. Singhdeo, among others.

Meanwhile, the screening committee for Rajasthan met in New Delhi on Tuesday, 5 March, and forwarded the list of party candidates for the state's 25 Lok Sabha seats.

"We had a good meeting. We are finalising the names from various states. A meeting of CEC will be held on 7 March and it is expected that a good number of candidates will be declared after that," Sachin Pilot said after the Rajasthan screening committee meeting.

"It was a good meeting and there is a good environment in our support. We are strengthening the INDIA bloc. The alliance has been finalised in some states and in future we will finalise the alliance in some other states as well," he said.

Asked if he would contest the polls, Pilot said the decision to contest or not is taken by the CEC.