Lok Sabha election 2024: Congress releases its 1st list, Rahul Gandhi to contest from Wayanad

The Congress on Friday released its first list of 39 candidates for the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The first list has names of Rahul Gandhi, who will be contesting from Wayanad, Bhupesh Baghel from Rajnandgaon, and Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram.

Other prominent leaders in the list are -- DK Suresh, who will be contesting from Bangalore Rural, K Sudhakaran from Kannur. Congress general secretary KC Venugopal will contest from Alapuzza. Of the 39 candidates, 15 are from the general category and 24 are from SC/ST/minorities.

Most candidates, 15, are from Kerala, 7 are from Karnataka, 6 from Chhattisgarh, 4 are from Telangana, 2 from Meghalaya, and 1 each from Nagaland and Sikkim.

Reacting on the candidates' list: "I am honoured and humbled that the Congress party has given me an opportunity to defend my seat...I look forward to a fair and effective contest. in 15 years of politics, I never needed to spend one day of negative campaigning," Tharoor said after the annoucement.

On Thursday, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge and former chief Sonia Gandhi attended the Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting at the party's headquarters in Delhi that was called to finalise the candidates' list. Gandhi, who is leading the party's Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra in Jaipur, was supposed to join the meeting virtually but eventually gave it a miss.