Cong forms screening panels for poll-bound northeastern states

Senior Congress leaders Mukul Wasnik, Oscar Fernandes and Kumari Selja will head the screening committees for poll-bound Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland, respectively, the party said today.
The three states are scheduled to go to polls next month.
"Congress president Rahul Gandhi today approved the screening committees for the poll-bound states of Tripura, Meghalaya and Nagaland," the party's national general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said.
"Mukul Wasnik will be the chairman of the screening committee for Tripura, and Oscar Fernandes and Selja will chair the panels for Meghalaya and Nagaland, respectively," he said here.
Leaders Shakeel Ahmed Khan and Amitabh Chakravarty will be members of the screening committee for Tripura, and Congress MP from Durg, Tamra Dhwaj Sahu, and former MP Meenakshi Natarajan will be members of the Meghalaya committee, Dwivedi said.

The Congress screening committee for Nagaland will have party MP Gaurav Gogoi and leader Mausam Noor as its members, he said, adding that respective state chiefs and CLP leaders will be ex-officio members of the panels.

The committees will screen candidates and recommend their names for the upcoming assembly elections in the three states.
The process of filing of nominations starts on January 24 in Tripura, while in Meghalaya and Nagaland it will start on January 31.
Polls in Tripura will be held on February 18, and in Meghalaya and Nagaland on February 27. The counting will be held on March 3 in all the three states.

Each of the states have a 60 assembly seats. The CPI-M is in power in Tripura and the Congress in Meghalaya.
In Nagaland, the Naga People's Front is in power. The Congress does not have an MLA in this state.