Congress to speed up candidate selection for Assembly election

The Congress will speed up steps for selection of candidates for Assembly elections in Kerala. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, KPCC President V. M. Sudheeran and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala together will play a key role in selecting candidates.

Seat sharing talks with constituents of UDF will be held without delay.

These decisions were taken at the meeting the Congress high command had with Mr. Chandy, Mr. Sudheeran and Mr. Chennithala in New Delhi on Monday.

The KPCC president told the media after the meeting that winnability and acceptability would be the prime criteria for selection of candidates. DCC president, general secretary in charge of organisation and senior leader who had been assigned to lead campaign in the civic elections at the district level would seek opinions from local units of party and feeder organisations on choice of candidates. They would submit reports to the KPCC.

The Chief Minister, KPCC president and Home Minister will then discuss the reports with them before submitting their recommendations to the election committee.  The committee will submit the final list to the High Command for decision. The existing election committee will continue.

The procedure will apply to all seats to be contested by the Congress including sitting seats.

The meeting emphasised the need for all leaders and workers of the party to stand unitedly for victory.

Mr. Sudheeran said that whether he would be contesting the elections was not relevant at this point.