Gujarat polls: Congress likely to finalise candidates list today

Top Congress leadership will Friday discuss and finalise its possible candidates for the Gujarat Assembly elections at a meeting of its Central Election Committee.

The Congress is seeking to wrest power from the BJP in Gujarat after being in the political wilderness for over two decades now.

The discussion will take place at the meeting of the party's CEC convened tomorrow evening.

The CEC is headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and has as its members party vice president Rahul Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh besides some top party general secretaries.

Sources said the Congress CEC has already discussed some candidates for the first phase of elections for 89 seats in its meeting last week, but has not declared any candidate so far.

All the candidates for the 182 seats will be discussed tomorrow at the CEC, but the party may not declare all of them tomorrow, the sources added.

The process of nomination for the first phase of election for 89 seats in Gujarat has already started with the isse of notification on November 14. The last date for filing nominations is November 21.

The election process for the second phase of polling on December 14 starts on November 20 with the issue of notification.

The votes will be counted on December 18, along with those of Himachal Pradesh where elections were held on November 9.

The BJP has already discussed its candidates at a meeting of its central election committee held yesterday, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah.

While the BJP has finalised the list of candidates for the Gujarat Assembly polls to be held next month, sources said the list has not been declared yet.