With the announcement of its second list on Thursday, the Congress has named its candidates for nearly half of the 543 Lok Sabha seats. The list is notable not for the names that are on it, but for those that are not.
Key among them is Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s Finance minister, who, according to insiders, is reluctant to contest elections this time. In 2009, Chidambaram won the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin of 3,354 votes. A petition challenging his victory is still pending with the Election Commission. It appears that Chidamabaram does not want to risk a defeat this time. He reportedly wants his son Karthi to get that ticket, and to be nominated to a Rajya Sabha seat himself.
Also in Tamil Nadu, former union minister KV Thangkabalu has told the party he would not like to contest. Union shipping minister GK Vasan's second term in the Rajya Sabha is coming to an end, but he does not want a Lok Sabha ticket despite knowing that he will not get a third term in the upper house.
There has been speculation that Manish Tiwari, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, is not keen to go back to Ludhiana in Punjab to seek votes. Speaking to Times Now on Thursday, Tiwari sought to debunk such rumours. “I am more than willing to re-contest from my seat,” he said. But he quickly added, “I have many more responsibilities in the party”, implying that he would not mind being spared a possible defeat.
To buck the anti-incumbency in his constituency, Tiwari was reportedly seeking a ticket from Chandigarh, but he lost out to Pawan Bansal, the former railways minister who had to step down after his nephew could be heard on leaked audio conversations negotiating the price of appointments to the Railway Board on his behalf.
Bansal is not the only corruption-tainted politician to be accommodated by the Congress. Subodh Kant Sahay, whose name featured in the coal blocks allocation scam, has been given a ticket too.
Beggars cannot be choosers. With key ministers reluctant to contest, the Congress has abandoned the rhetoric on clean candidates and is falling back on whomever it can find. There are reports that Ashok Chavan and Suresh Kalmadi might get tickets too.
Chandresh Kumari Katoch, sitting Congress MP from Jodhpur, is so confident of losing that she wants a safer seat in Himachal Pradesh. Union minister Santosh Chowdhary also wants a safer seat than her current Hoshiarpur constituency in Punjab.
Meanwhile, the squabbling within the BJP continued. The party announced its third list of candidates on Thursday. The list was silent on Lucknow and Varanasi, which have become contentious ever since Narendra Modi’s team began to eye them as his possible launching pad to Parliament. Murli Manohar Joshi, the BJP representative from Varanasi, and Lalji Tandon, the Lucknow leader, have both expressed their reluctance to make way for Modi.
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Key among them is Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s Finance minister, who, according to insiders, is reluctant to contest elections this time. In 2009, Chidambaram won the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin of 3,354 votes. A petition challenging his victory is still pending with the Election Commission. It appears that Chidamabaram does not want to risk a defeat this time. He reportedly wants his son Karthi to get that ticket, and to be nominated to a Rajya Sabha seat himself.
Also in Tamil Nadu, former union minister KV Thangkabalu has told the party he would not like to contest. Union shipping minister GK Vasan's second term in the Rajya Sabha is coming to an end, but he does not want a Lok Sabha ticket despite knowing that he will not get a third term in the upper house.
There has been speculation that Manish Tiwari, the Information and Broadcasting Minister, is not keen to go back to Ludhiana in Punjab to seek votes. Speaking to Times Now on Thursday, Tiwari sought to debunk such rumours. “I am more than willing to re-contest from my seat,” he said. But he quickly added, “I have many more responsibilities in the party”, implying that he would not mind being spared a possible defeat.
To buck the anti-incumbency in his constituency, Tiwari was reportedly seeking a ticket from Chandigarh, but he lost out to Pawan Bansal, the former railways minister who had to step down after his nephew could be heard on leaked audio conversations negotiating the price of appointments to the Railway Board on his behalf.
Bansal is not the only corruption-tainted politician to be accommodated by the Congress. Subodh Kant Sahay, whose name featured in the coal blocks allocation scam, has been given a ticket too.
Beggars cannot be choosers. With key ministers reluctant to contest, the Congress has abandoned the rhetoric on clean candidates and is falling back on whomever it can find. There are reports that Ashok Chavan and Suresh Kalmadi might get tickets too.
Chandresh Kumari Katoch, sitting Congress MP from Jodhpur, is so confident of losing that she wants a safer seat in Himachal Pradesh. Union minister Santosh Chowdhary also wants a safer seat than her current Hoshiarpur constituency in Punjab.
Meanwhile, the squabbling within the BJP continued. The party announced its third list of candidates on Thursday. The list was silent on Lucknow and Varanasi, which have become contentious ever since Narendra Modi’s team began to eye them as his possible launching pad to Parliament. Murli Manohar Joshi, the BJP representative from Varanasi, and Lalji Tandon, the Lucknow leader, have both expressed their reluctance to make way for Modi.
