After a preliminary list of 36 candidates, the Congress party has released its list of additional 43 candidates to contest the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

These include seven candidates of Gujarat:

Geni Thakor - Banaskantha

Anant Patel - Valsad (ST)

Siddharth Chaudhary - Bardoli (ST)

Rohan Gupta - Ahmedabad East

Bharat Makvana - Ahmedabad West (SC)

Lalit Vasoya - Porbandar

Nitish Lalan - Kachchh (SC)

Three of them are sitting MLAs.

Apart from these, the list contains 36 names of candidates from Assam (12), Madhya Pradesh (10), Rajasthan (10), Uttarakhand (3), and Daman and Diu (1).

Nakul Nath (Chhindwara), Vaibhav Gelot (Jalore), and Gaurav Gogoi (Jorhat) are sons of former Congress Chief Ministers Kamal Nath (Madhya Pradesh), Ashok Gehlot (Rajasthan), and late Tarun Gogoi (Assam).

Rahul Kaswan, who switched over from the BJP a couple of days ago, has also been nominated from Rajasthan’s Churu.

Announcing the candidates, Congress General Secretary, Organisation, KC Venugopal said 76.7% of the second list candidates comprise SC/STs, OBCs, and Muslims.

He said 25 of the candidates were below 50 years of age, 8 were aged between 50 to 60, and 10 were aged 61 to 72.

However, the names of perceived heavyweights of the party were missing from the list.

The second list still does not feature candidates from crucial states like Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

The first list released last week had 39 candidates, including Rahul Gandhi from Kerala’s Wayanad, as well as Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram, and Venugopal himself from Alappuzha.

Meanwhile, BJP’s list included prime minister Narendra Modi fighting the election from Varanasi, UP, for the third consecutive time. Meanwhile, defence minister Rajnath Singh is fielded from Lucknow, and Smriti Irani from Amethi.

(With inputs from IANS)

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