Imbroglio over finalising Congress candidate list

Thiruvananthapuram: The imbroglio over finalising the candidate list of Congress for the Assembly elections continues.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi held discussions with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Home Minister Ramesh Chenitthala and KPCC president V. M. Sudheeran in New Delhi to resolve the issues. However, Mr. Chandy as well as Sudheeran was adamant over their stands.

Mr. Sudheeran wants tainted ministers and sitting members of the Assembly to be excluded from the list while Mr. Chandy is opposed to any proposal to keep out ministers such as K. Babu. There is also the issue whether K. C. Joseph should be fielded from Irikkur again as he had contested several times from the constituency consecutively.

Protests have been made over Mr. Sudheeran’s proposal to keep out Adoor Prakash who faced several allegations. Mr. Babu contends that there was no case registered against him anywhere in India.

While agreements could be arrived at on final choice for about 35 seats, discussions are still on remaining seats.  The screening committee, which met on Wednesday, will be meeting again tomorrow. It is likely that the contentious issues regarding tainted leaders might be referred to the high command rather than being discussed in the committee.

Efforts are also on, in between, to finalise seat sharing with UDF constituents. Decisions could be taken on some of the seats only after conclusion of the seat sharing talks.