Trinamool's Umesh Mishra to contest against Sonia in Rae Bareli

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The Trinamool Congress Wednesday announced its candidates for 18 more Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, including Umesh Mishra for the prestigious Rae Bareli constituency which has been electing Congress chief Sonia Gandhi since 2004.

Mamata Banerjee's party has now fielded candidates for 104 seats in 17 states.

The Trinamool has named 19 candidates in Uttar Pradesh, including Indira Tiwari - the granddaughter of former chief minister Kamalapati Tripathi - who will be contesting from Varanasi against Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

In Rae Bareli, considered a pocket borough of the Gandhi family, Trinamool's Umesh Mishra will take on the Congress president.

The Trinamool, which has claimed it would emerge as the third largest party after the Congress and BJP in the coming polls, has put up candidates in Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim and Maharashtra besides West Bengal.

In Assam, the party's star candidate is Parvez Ahmed, son of late president Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, for the Barpeta Lok Sabha seat.