Congress Releases Candidate List for West Bengal Assembly Elections

The Congress on Sunday released its first list of 284 candidates for the upcoming West Bengal Assembly elections. It named senior leader and former state unit chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from Baharampur and former Trinamool Congress MP Mausam Noor from Malatipur in the list. The party, which has decided to contest all 294 Assembly seats in the state on its own, announced the bulk of its candidates in a single list. Among other prominent names, the Congress has fielded Madhap Rai from Darjeeling, Abdul Hannan from Sujapur, Susmita Biswas from Dum Dum, Gautam Bhattacharya from Diamond Harbour, Souvik Mukherjee from Asansol Dakshin and Prasenjit Puitandi from Asansol Uttar. The release of the candidate list follows detailed deliberations by the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), which met a day earlier to finalise nominees for the high-stakes election. AICC in-charge for West Bengal Ghulam Ahmed Mir said the party had received around 2,500 applications for the 294 Assembly seats and confirmed that Congress would contest all constituencies. “We will contest all 294 seats in West Bengal, leaving none vacant. This has been the demand of our workers from the beginning,” he said. The West Bengal Assembly elections will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29, with counting scheduled for May 4.