Jharkhand assembly election: Congress' Gourav Vallabh to contest against CM Raghubar Das

RANCHI: National spokesperson of Congress Gourav Vallabh has been fielded against Jharkhand Chief Minister and BJP leader Raghubar Das from Jamshedpur East assembly seat for the upcoming Assembly elections in the state.

The Congress on Saturday released two lists of a total of eight candidates who have been given a party ticket for the upcoming assembly poll in Jharkhand, scheduled to take place in five phases starting November 30. The counting of the votes will take place on December 23.

Congress on Saturday released a list of its two candidates for the upcoming Assembly by-elections in Karnataka.

While Gourav has been fielded from Jamshedpur East, Mamta Devi will contest from Ramgarh constituency from a Congress ticket.

Gourav Vallabh, who served as a finance professor at the XLRI Management Institute in Jamshedpur, came to limelight after the video of him countering BJP's firebrand spokesperson Sambit Patra went viral on social media.

Earlier on Monday, Congress announced its third list of 19 candidates for the Jharkhand assembly polls.

Among those fielded by the party in the third list include Alamgir Alam from Pakur, Irfan Ansari from Jamtara, R C Prasad Mehta from Hazaribagh, Sanjay Singh from Bokaro and Mannan Mallick from Dhanbad.

On Sunday (November 10), the party had released two lists of five candidates and one candidate.

The Jarkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Congress and Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal had recently announced a pre-poll alliance for the state with former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren as the alliance's CM face.

The Congress will contest 31 seats out of 81 seats in the Jharkhand assembly.

The RJD will contest on seven seats, while the largest chunk of the alliance share has gone to the JMM, which will contest elections on 43 seats.