2016 Assam Assembly Elections - Congress Announces list of 65 candidates for Phase I Tuesday March 15,2016

After two days of brainstorming, the Congress’s “election committee” on Tuesday released a list of 65 candidates for the first phase of Assembly elections in Assam.

“The list is well-balanced,” said C.P. Joshi, senior Congress leader and party general secretary for Assam. “We have a good number of educated people who are doctors, graduates and have a great record of social work.”

C.P Joshi said that except for five, all MLAs serving in the current Congress-led government in the State had been re-nominated. 

Apart from them, 22 young leaders and 11 women have been nominated for the 126-member strong Assembly.

Though Pradesh Congress Committee chief Anjan Dutta did not make it to the list, C.P Joshi said the leadership decided to have his “full time” for the campaign, and “overburdening him” as a candidate would not have helped the party.

SC/ST representation

Three candidates have been picked from the Scheduled Caste community and nine from the Scheduled Tribes. Since 14.3 per cent of the population in Assam belong to the Scheduled Tribe community, the party high command has decided to have more candidates from their community.

Important dates:

	Phase 1	Phase 2
Date of Issue of Gazette Notification	March 11	March 14
Last Date for Nominations	March 18	March 22
Date for Scrutiny of Nominations	March 19	March 24
Last date for withdrawal of candidatures	March 21	March 26
Date of poll	April 4	April 11
Counting	May 19	May 19