The list included three Jharkhand Lok Sabha constituencies: Lohardaga, Khunti and Hazaribag.
Three more names were finalised for the state in the party's Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting held in New Delhi while talks on seat-sharing are on among I.N.D.I.A bloc partners, Congress Legislature Party leader Alamgir Alam said.
Kalicharan Munda, Sukhdeo Bhagat and Jai Prakashbhai Patel will contest the polls in Khunti (ST), Lohardaga (ST) and Hazaribagh seats respectively, the party announced in New Delhi.
Patel, the Mandu MLA who left BJP and embraced Congress recently, has been fielded from Hazaribag Lok Sabha seat. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Congress had fielded Gopal Prasad Sahu, who lost to BJP’s Jayant Sinha by 4.79 lakh votes. The BJP this time fielded MLA Manish Jaiswal.
Kalicharan Munda will contest from the Khunti Lok Sabha seat. He was defeated in 2019 by Union minister Arjun Munda by a narrow margin of 1,445 votes.
In Lohardaga, the Congress fielded Sukhdeo Bhagat who lost to BJP’s Sudarshan Bhagat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
"The CEC is likely to announce the other names in a phased manner as elections in Jharkhand will be held in the last four phases," Alam said.
He said a final decision on seat sharing among the I.N.D.I.A. bloc allies is still to be taken.
Leaders of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc said that a seat-sharing agreement has been finalised for all the 14 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state.
Earlier, the Congress released the seventh candidates' list on Tuesday, announcing names for the remaining four seats in Chhattisgarh and last seat in Tamil Nadu.
Congress' sixth list of candidates
The Congress on Monday fielded Prahlad Gunjal, a former BJP leader and close aide of former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje, to take on outgoing Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla from Kota in Rajasthan. The candidature of Gunjal, who joined the Congress last week, was announced as the Congress released its sixth list of five candidates for the Lok Sabha polls.
It announced four candidates for Rajasthan and one for Tamil Nadu. The Congress fielded Ramchandra Choudhary from Ajmer, Sudarshan Rawat from Rajsamand, Damodar Gurjar from Bhilwara, and C Robert Bruce from Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu).
Gunjal joined the Congress in Jaipur last Thursday in the presence of former chief minister Ashok Gehlot and Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra. Gunjal, a close aide of BJP leader Vasundhara Raje, was the MLA from Kota North twice earlier but had lost the last assembly polls. He is seen as a very vocal leader and with his arrival, the Congress is expected to benefit in the Hadoti region.
Lok Sabha Elections 2024
The General Elections 2024 for the 18th Lok Sabha will be held in seven phases, starting from April 19. The results will be declared on June 4.
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