Zee Media Bureau/Biplob Ghosal
New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday released its third list of candidates for the upcoming General Elections fielding Union Minister Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk seat in the national capital and giving its ticket from Pune to Vishwajeet Kadam in place of sitting scam-tainted MP Suresh Kalmadi.
Other prominent leaders who were included in the third list are - Ajay Maken, general secretary AICC and in-charge communication department, will contest from New Delhi seat, Sandeep Dikshit (East Delhi) and Jai Prakash Agarwal (North East Delhi).
Partap Singh Bajwa will contest from Gurdaspur, Punjab and Minister of Corporate Affairs Sachin Pilot will fight from Ajmer.
Tribal leader and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi has been given the LS ticket from Mahasamund, another veteran leader CP Joshi has been fielded from rural Jaipur and Krishna Tirath will contest the LS polls from North West Delhi.
While reacting on getting a ticket from Mahasamund, Jogi said that he was happy about Congress president Sonia Gandhi giving him a chance to fight the LS elections.
The Congress seems to have realised that the image of the party needs to be changed, which has been marred by various mega scams like Commonwealth Games, 2G spectrum scam, Coalscam, Railgate, Adarsh. The third list of 58 candidates for the Lok Sabha didn`t included scam-tainted Suresh Kalmadi, who was tonight denied ticket by the grand old party Congress which fielded young leader Vishwajeet Kadam in his place.
Former Team India captain Mohd Azharuddin, who is a sitting member from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, was shifted to Tonk-Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan having substantial minority population.
Other prominent names in the list from Rajasthan include union minister Chandresh Kumari (Jodhpur) and Jyoti Mirdha (Nagaur). Son-in-law of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, has been made a nominee from Panchmahal`s seat in Gujarat.
Former Bihar DGP Aashish Ranjan Sinha, who belongs to the Kurmi community is being fielded from Chief Minister Nitish Kumar`s stronghold of Nalanda. The Kurmi community have a dominant presence in the constituency.
With today`s list, the total candidates declared by Congress come to 318. One candidate has been replaced with Pankan Aggarwal brought in from Muzaffarnagar in place of Suraj S Verma.
Kalmadi, a former chief of the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee, is an accused in a corruption case related to the 2010 sporting event.
