The Congress on Friday released the first list of 39 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, including former party president Rahul Gandhi, who has been fielded from Kerala’s Wayanad, the constituency he currently represents.

The release of the list came a day after the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) finalised the names of candidates for the first list during a meeting chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge at the party headquarters.

Addressing a press conference, along with other party leaders, Congress general secretary in charge of Organisation KC Venugopal said, “Yesterday, the Congress CEC had met. The CEC has selected the first list of 39 candidates which included the name of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and former Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel.’’

Of the 39 candidates, he said 15 are from general category while 24 others are from SC, ST, OBC and minorities.

The senior party leader said Baghel would contest from Rajnandgaon parliamentary constituency in Chhattisgarh.

Among the candidates from Kerala, besides Gandhi, are other heavyweights, Venugopal and Shashi Tharoor. Venugopal will contest from Alappuzha and Tharoor from his home turf Thiruvananthapuram.

Meghalaya Congress President Vincent H Pala will be the Congress nominee from the Shillong constituency. He was elected a parliamentarian from the said seat in the last general elections.

As per the list, the party fielded its Tripura unit chief and former MLA Ashish Kumar Saha from Tripura West parliamentary seat.

The candidates announced for Telangana in the first list are Suresh Kumar Shetkar from Zahirabad, Raghuveer Knuduru from Nalgonda, C V Chand Reddy from Mahbubnagar and BN Porika from Mahabubabad seats.

“Our priority is to win maximum number of the Lok Sabha seats to defeat (Narendra) Modi in this election. The top priority is to win the maximum Lok Sabha seats,” said Venugopal.

In an apparent reference to the party’s “guarantees”, including 30 lakh jobs made by Kharge to fulfill if voted to power, he said, “Whenever we are promising, we are fulfilling. We did it in Karnataka and Telangana.”

Notably, the party’s National Alliance Committee (NAC), which is being headed by Mukul Wasnik, has been holding meetings with top leaders of parties of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) bloc on seat-sharing for the general elections.

The party has announced a seat-sharing arrangement with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Haryana, and Goa.

It may be mentioned here that the ruling BJP last week released the first list of 195 candidates for the upcoming elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will contest from Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi parliamentary seat.